The Curse of the Marquis de Sade

September 1, 2022

Written in 1785 by the imprisoned Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom flitted through Europe as a tiny scroll until its eventual publication in 1904. Much noise was made when rare-manuscripts dealer G�rard Lh�ritier purchased the original scroll in 2014 and brought it back to France, but allegations that he ran his company as a Ponzi scheme brought even more scandal to the already scandalous book.

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December 1, 2022
The Marquis de Sade is a name that would light up any literary history; this one focuses on the life of his most famous manuscript. In 1785, Donatien Alphonse Fran�ois (1740-1814), aka the Marquis de Sade, wrote 120 Days of Sodom, composing the manuscript in tiny handwriting on a scroll of 157,000 words while incarcerated atop the Liberty Tower at the Bastille. In it, "four wealthy degenerates" conduct a four-month orgy with 32 subordinates, and their perversions only escalate in their depravity and horror. De Sade's name would become synonymous with sexual pleasure through pain, and this story of his growing reputation through the years explains why. Though journalist Warner looks at the development of "bibliophilia's most shadowy realm: the world of erotic books," his primary focus is on the journey of the 120 Days manuscript through its many owners, court battles, a brazen theft, its place at the center of "the largest Ponzi scheme in French history," and its eventual acquisition by the French government for 4.5 million euros. Warner tells this history in alternating chapters devoted to the life of de Sade, the peripatetic journeys of the 120 Days scroll, and its role as a prized commodity among bibliophiles. The result is an occasionally confusing chronology that jumps back and forth among the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, but the author provides several valuable maps and a cast of characters at the beginning of the book, which help orient readers. Ultimately, the narrative's greatest scandal is not the licentious behavior of de Sade, whom the surrealists dubbed the "freest spirit who ever lived," nor the literary stature of his transgressive works but rather the sheer dimension of the investment fraud, a "decade-long, continent-spanning, billion-euro con," in which the scroll played a central role. As Warner demonstrates, de Sade's depravity pales in comparison to the gyrations of financial tycoons who sought to capitalize on his most monumental work. An engrossing history of the travels of a notorious manuscript across nations and centuries.

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December 19, 2022
In this illuminating account, journalist Warner (The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny with Peter McGraw) follows the trail of the Marquis de Sade’s original manuscript of 120 Days of Sodom, an unfinished novel of sex and sadism, written on a scroll in 1785 while the author was a prisoner in the Bastille. Warner brings to life its various owners over two centuries, including French noblemen and German gay rights pioneers. In 1985, it ended up in the hands of rare manuscript dealer Gérard Lhéritier, a Frenchman who was more Bernie Madoff than the socialite man of letters he portrayed himself to be. His company, Aristophil, bought rare manuscripts and antique writings, then sold shares of them to unsuspecting investors at artificially inflated prices. When the Aristophil house of cards collapsed in 2014, the French government seized the manuscript of 120 Days of Sodom, along with Lhéritier’s other assets. As of 2021, its estimated worth is €4.55 million and it is held in the National Library of France. The wealth of detail never slows Warner’s well-paced narrative. Literary history buffs will want to check this out. Agent: Larry Weissman, Larry Weissman Literary.

January 1, 2023
Consider the manuscript of the Marquis de Sade's notorious--some would say depraved--eighteenth-century novel 120 Days of Sodom. Written on a scroll while the author was a prisoner in the Bastille, it extends, when unrolled, to 40 feet, with script (on both sides) so tiny it must be read with a magnifying glass. How the book went from infamy to the status of French national treasure is the subject of this fascinating, deeply researched book (there are 38 pages of single-spaced notes). Moving back and forth in time, Warner charts the manuscript's troubled provenance (it was, among other things, stolen, smuggled, and seemingly lost) and provides a number of necessary diversions into the extraordinary life and times of the marquis and his family, contextual French history, and the contemporary world of rare manuscript and antiquarian book dealing, including how the sale of 120 Days became arguably the largest Ponzi scheme in French history. Some readers will regard this as an esoteric exercise, but for bibliophiles, it is a feast and even leaves readers wondering if, as some claim, the manuscript is cursed.

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