The Crimes of Love

This collection gathers a selection of tales from the Marquis de Sade's four-volume set of moral stories, framed by his important preface, the Essay on Novels, in which he sets out his theory of fiction. The stories themselves are not pornographic but dark, dramatic narratives of ambition, despair, fatality, and betrayal, populated by ruthless seducers, ruined innocents, and the workings of cruel chance. Tales such as Florville and Courval trace how concealed sins and coincidence converge into devastating tragedy, while others anatomize the destruction wrought by greed and deceit. Sade uses the conventions of sentimental and gothic fiction to explore his bleak vision of nature, virtue, and the indifference of fate to human suffering. Presented with the contemporary critical response and Diderot's rebuttal, the edition shows Sade as a serious, provocative literary figure wrestling with morality through storytelling rather than as a mere scandalous name.