The struggle for power between two magnetic personalities, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte to Valmont, is charted through a series of brilliant letters whose shimmering surface reveals all the more clearly the cynical amorality of their authors. These former lovers manipulate innocent victims into their elaborate schemes of seduction and revenge - the teenage Cécile, just out of her convent, her sweetheart the Chevalier Danceny, Madame de Tourvel, a virtuous married woman - with appalling success until events and feelings spiral out of control, and the main protagonists turn fatally upon each other.
Over the years Dangerous Liaisons has gathered devotees as disparate as Marie Antoinette, Baudelaire and Virginia Woolf. It has inspired plays, films, ballets, operas and TV series, but it is the original novel that best demonstrates Laclos' unique combination of comedy and tragedy, sentiment and brutality, farce and horror; and Laclos' own subtle prose that conveys both psychological insight and an erotic tenderness as essential to the story as the verbal fireworks.
| ISBN: | 9781841594408 |
| Publication date: | 26th February 2026 |
| Author: | Choderlos de Laclos |
| Publisher: | Everyman |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 352 pages |
| Series: | Everyman's Library Classics |
| Genres: |
Classic fiction: general and literary Narrative theme: Interior life Narrative theme: Social issues Epistolary fiction Fiction in translation |
The struggle for power between two magnetic personalities, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte to Valmont, is charted through a series of brilliant letters whose shimmering surface reveals all the more clearly the cynical amorality of their authors. These former lovers manipulate innocent victims into their elaborate schemes of seduction and revenge - the teenage Cécile, just out of her convent, her sweetheart the Chevalier Danceny, Madame de Tourvel, a virtuous married woman - with appalling success until events and feelings spiral out of control, and the main protagonists turn fatally upon each other.
Over the years Dangerous Liaisons has gathered devotees as disparate as Marie Antoinette, Baudelaire and Virginia Woolf. It has inspired plays, films, ballets, operas and TV series, but it is the original novel that best demonstrates Laclos' unique combination of comedy and tragedy, sentiment and brutality, farce and horror; and Laclos' own subtle prose that conveys both psychological insight and an erotic tenderness as essential to the story as the verbal fireworks.
Dangerous Liaisons features in the following genres: Classic fiction: general and literary, Narrative theme: Interior life, Narrative theme: Social issues, Epistolary fiction, Fiction in translation
Dangerous Liaisons is available in Hardback, Paperback
Dangerous Liaisons was written by Choderlos de Laclos and published by Everyman
Dangerous Liaisons has 352 pages
Yes it is part of Everyman's Library Classics series
£15.29