I like these little "A Very Short Introduction" books from Oxford University Press. They are quick to read and well-written, most of them, I'd say. Mr. Phillips likes Sade a good deal and seems to insist that Sade is as much as an important thinker as say, Nietzsche or Foucault. Big claims for a small book. I guess there is something proto-Nietzschean or proto-Freudian about Sade, but I don't think that is so. Sade was a mediocre writer with quite an imagination for moral transgression and sexual perversions. And he wrote a lot because, well, he had a lot of time to do so in prison. Anyway, this is a good, reader-accessible introduction to Sade with a few juicy historical tidbits and yes, early illustrations from Juliette and 120 days of Sodom. It's a little book, too, in terms of dimensions--very cute that way. It fit in my purse, and I read it while waiting in the doctor's office. ( )

De Sade, who gave our language the term `sadism', is most generally known today for his four notorious `libertine novels', including Justine and Juliette, whose publication in 1791 and 1793 led to his serving many years' imprisonment for obscenity. Of French aristocratic birth in 1740, he attended a Parisien Jesuit School for four years from the age of ten, where, the author suggests, he was whipped and `may have acquired a liking foer whipping and sodomy' -- a victim of child abuse. Of his 74 years of life, 28 were spent in prisons or an insane asylum, for crimes of debauchery, sodomy, `counter-revolutionary activities' during the French Revolution, and obscene writing. But he wrote also four other, historical novels, travelogues, volumes of short stories, essays of literary criticism, political pamphlets, more than twenty plays, and voluminous letters. The author of this book considers that the sheer breadth and complexity of Sade's creative output and the novelty and profundity of his thought should have `secured him a place alongside the greatest authors and thinkers of the European Enlightenment', finding him highly influential upon subsequent philosophers and writers. He was `a subversive iconoclast and life-long rebel', and it would be an error to conflate Sade's own views with those of his fictional characters: Justine was written at the behest of his publisher.
This is a proper scholarly treatment, complete with notes, bibliography, illustrations and index. However, the detailed accounts included here, illustrated, of the content of the `libertine novels' make it definitely a book to be hidden away on the highest shelf in a family home, and too strong meat for a reading-group discussion. ( )