ONE OF THE ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECES OF FRENCH LITERATURE, FIRST EDITION AND IN A BEAUTIFUL AMATEUR BINDING.

Original edition of one of the absolute masterpieces of French literature, which has entered the global collective imagination also thanks to its many film adaptations: suffice it to recall Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liaisons (1988), with a stellar cast including Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Michelle Pfeiffer, Uma Thurman, and Keanu Reeves; and then Milo Forman's Valmont , starring Colin Firth and Annette Bening, winner of the César Award for Best Set and Costume Design. «Les Liaisons Dangereuses» was first published in the spring of 1782, more precisely between April 7 and 15 (Brun, «Bibliographie», p. 41).

Epistolary novel, written by the semi-unknown artillery officer Pierre Ambroise Françoise Choderlos de Laclos, staged the murky and libertine events of the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil: «l audacious des Liaisons dangereuses ne consistet-elle ni dans la débauche facile au langage cru, ni dans la perversité au premier degré ou la jouissance of doing evil proper to Sade, more in the art of telling or plutôt de l'écrire pour un conaisseur admired et un peu vexé, placé en position de voyeur comme lecteur» («En français dans le texte, n. 174)». From the moment it was first published in the magazine, its success was immediate and overwhelming: on March 16, 1782, Choderlos de Laclos signed a contract with the publisher Durand Neveu for the printing of 2,000 copies of the work, and as early as April 21, the author agreed to the publication of a second edition; by the end of the year, there were 16 different editions, some authorized, others, most, counterfeits (Brun, «Bibliographie», p. 5; Talvart-Place, II, pp. 290-300). Today, it is possible to orient oneself in this complex labyrinth of prints only thanks to the precious bibliographies prepared by Talvart-Place, Ducup de Saint-Paul, and above all, most recently, Max Brun: we can therefore state with certainty that the first three sections of the copy presented here are entirely consistent with the original edition (marked A in Brun's «Bibliographie», pp. 8-10 and 40-41). The last section instead corresponds to the edition signed C by Brun, the reprint authorized by Choderlos de Laclos through the addenda to the contract of 21 April with the publisher, which closely followed edition B: «Durand Neveu, harcelé par ses lecteurs, avant de publier C, prévue dans l'additif du contract, a édité hâtivement B» (Brun, «Bibliographie, »p. 43). In this last volume the errors of edition A have now been corrected and the Errata at the end of the volume has therefore been deleted. Talvart - Place, «Bibliographie des auteurs modernis de langue française», II, p. 290-300; M. Brun, «Bibliographie des éditions des Liaisons dangereuses portant le millésime 1782», Le livre et l’estampe, 1963; M. Brun, «Contribution bibliographique à l'étude des éditions des Liaisons dangereuses portant le millésime 1782», in «Bulletin du bibliophile», 1958; J.-M. Chatelain, Livres du Cabinet de Pierre Berès, 2003, nº 25.