Philosophy in the Boudoir

This new Creation Books edition couples this erotic masterpiece with The Lusts of the Libertines, a document taken from 120 Days of Sodom, in which de Sade's depraved imagination is given free reign to catalogue 447 of the wildest depravities and atrocities he can conceive, from incest and coprophilia through to mutilation, torture and bloody murder. Originally intended to be fleshed out later, their reduction to numbered lists seems to render them even more intense and confrontational.

Philosophy of the Boudoir is perhaps the most representative text out of all the Marquis de Sade's works. In the boudoir of a sequestered country house, a young virgin is ruthlessly schooled in the ways of sexual perversion, fornication, murder, incest and complete self-gratification which culminates with the final and most shocking act of liberation carried out on her own mother.

Within these pages lies de Sade's notorious doctrine of libertinage expounded in full and coupled with liberal doses of savage, unbridled eroticism, cruelty and violent sexuality.