/guid/9202a8c04000641f80000000001a061b rename

Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos (18 October 1741 - 5 September 1803) was a French...

Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos (18 October 1741 - 5 September 1803) was a French novelist, official and army general, best known for writing the epistolary novel Les Liaisons dangereuses. A unique case in French literature, he was for a long time considered to be as scandalous a writer as the Marquis de Sade or Nicolas-Edme Rétif. He was a military officer with no illusions about human relations, and an amateur writer; however, his initial plan was to "write a work which departed from the ordinary, which made a noise, and which would remain on earth after his death"; from this point of view he mostly attained his goals, with the fame of his masterwork Les Liaisons dangereuses . It is one of the masterpieces of novelistic literature of the 18th century, which explores the amorous intrigues of the aristocracy. It has inspired a large number of critical and analytic commentaries, plays, and films. Laclos was born in Amiens into a bourgeois family, and in 1760 was sent to the École royale d'artillerie de La Fère, ancestor of the École polytechnique. As a young lieutenant, he briefly served in a garrison at La Rochelle until the end of the Seven Years War (1763). Later he