Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
France
Icy, elegant letters that let cruelty pose as wit: every profession of love doubling as a move in someone else's game.
Laclos spent his early military career garrisoned in provincial forts with little to do, and turned that boredom into Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782), the only novel he ever completed, drawing on Richardson's Clarissa and the epistolary form's gift for claustrophobic, real-time betrayal.
The novel's letters trace the Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont as they conspire, out of vanity and old grievance, to ruin an innocent convent girl and a virtuous married woman: a cold anatomy of aristocratic cruelty that scandalized and captivated Paris on publication.
He went on to serve the Revolution and then Napoleon as an artillery general and military theorist, far from literature, and died of dysentery on campaign in Italy in 1803, having never written anything else that came close to matching it.
Lines of influence
No descendants recorded, yet.
Their books in the atlas
- 1782
Les Liaisons DangereusesLvl 5epistolary
Meanwhile, elsewhere
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1764–1823Ann RadcliffeEnglandWestern Europe · England
1771–1832Walter ScottScotlandWestern Europe · ScotlandIf you like Laclos, try
1689–1761Samuel RichardsonEnglandshaped Laclos · shared movement: The Enlightenment Novel · kindred genres: epistolary, psychological novel
1713–1784Denis DiderotFranceshared movement: The Enlightenment Novel · both write in French · same region & era
1697–1763Abbé PrévostFranceshared movement: The Enlightenment Novel · both write in French · same region & era
1694–1778VoltaireFranceshared movement: The Enlightenment Novel · both write in French · same region & era
1634–1693Madame de La FayetteFrancekindred genres: psychological novel · both write in French · neighboring movements
1802–1885Victor HugoFranceboth write in French · neighboring movements · same region & era