A delightfully illustrated literary anthology that explores the fantasies, seductions, and intrigues of the eighteenth-century French lover
This sumptuous volume presents more than eighty selections from eighteenth-century French literature, each concerning some facet of the game of love as practiced by the libertine, or the
freethinking aristocratic hedonist, a type that flourished?not least in literature?in the declining years of the Ancien Régime. These pieces, which include fiction, drama, verse, essays, and
letters, are the work of some sixty writers, both familiar?such as Voltaire, Rousseau, and, of course, the Marquis de Sade?and lesser-known. Each selection is illustrated by well-chosen
period artworks, many rarely seen, by Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, and numerous others.
