Marquis de Sade Biography

Marquis de Sade was a French nobleman and an erotic novel writer. He wrote several novels, short stories, essays, plays, and other pieces of literature. Throughout his life he repeatedly committed severe sexual offences, for which he was imprisoned several times. He was even sentenced to death but somehow escaped. Eventually he was declared insane and sent to an asylum where he later died. Sade’s perverse sexual preferences and erotic writings gave rise to the term ‘sadism’. His books were never allowed to be published; hence he published several of his works anonymously. After his death, his descendants regarded his life and works as scandalous till the mid-twentieth century. But in late 1940s, Comte Xavier de Sade, one of his descendants, took interest in his ancestor's writings. He, and later his son, found some manuscripts. Critics have for long debated whether his novels have any redeeming value. Numerous writers have severely criticized Sade while some have hailed him as a literary hero. Michael Onfray, a contemporary French writer and philosopher, said, "It is intellectually bizarre to make Sade a hero... this man was a sexual delinquent".