During this time, he was arrested and thrown into jail for the first of many times. Immediately after the war, he turned to more enjoyable pursuits like visiting plays and operas, seducing actresses, and running up incredible debts. He also enlisted in the military and fought in the Seven Years’ War, distinguishing himself against the British. He was the only child in a large household, so he was fawned over and grew up incredibly well-educated and wealthy. The de Sade family line goes back centuries one of their ancestors was Laura de Noves, the woman who Petrarch about and contributed towards the start of the Renaissance. So who was the man alternatively called the “Divine Marquis” and the author of the “most abominable book ever engendered by the most depraved imagination?”ĭonatien Alphonse François was born in 1740, to a royal family in Provence, France.

However, pioneering feminists like Simone de Beauvoir cite him as significant for feminism, and artists, thinkers, and authors like Charles Swinburne, Gustave Flaubert, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henry Miller, Alfred Hitchcock, Charles Baudelaire, Pablo Picasso, Edgar Degas, Salvador Dali and others are indebted to him.

Not even the work of the “father of pornography,” Pietro Aretino, received such united suppression from nearly every country in the world. In fact, de Sade’s work still remains suppressed in a number of countries, including western ones: the Australian government banned 120 Days of Sodom in 1957 and a movie based on the book remained banned through 2008. Combined, his books have been banned for nearly 1000 years (more than 200 years apiece). The answer, of course, is tipped at in the headline, but to elaborate: the works of Donatien Alphonse François (1740-1814), better known as the Marquis de Sade, were banned nearly-immediately upon publication by both the King of France Louis XVI and Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and remained so for over two centuries.

If you were to ask an everyday reader what the most banned author of all time was, what do you think the answer would be? Portrait of Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) by Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo

120 days of sodom pdf