De Sade is supposed to have written The 120 Days of Sodom in tiny handwriting on a single long roll of paper, while imprisoned in the Bastille. It tells of four men--"libertines," De Sade calls them--who abduct a group of young teenagers, 8 boys and 8 girls, whom they take to a remote castle in order to subject them to an ordeal of humiliation, ( Read more... )

Back in June I was assigned Clarissa, Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel published in 1748. Some critics consider it a great novel, even "the greatest novel of the 18th century" (though in my opinion it does not remotely approach Tom Jones). I struggled for several months to read Clarissa, but it has defeated me. I have read only about a quarter ( Read more... )

The most famous work of satire ever written.


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Translators:Philip Stewart and Jean Vaché
Publication date:1761
Edition: University Press of New England, 1997
# of pages: 612
Source: Local library

Back of the book: Rousseau's great epistolary novel, Julie, or the New Heloise, an immediate continental sensation when it first appeared in 1761, was one of the most popular novels of its time. The ( Read more... )

One-line summary: A satire, a children's story, and an early work of science fiction.


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(  The Rocky Road to London: Joseph Andrews, by Henry Fielding )

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( Candide - Voltaire )

Title: Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded
Author: Samuel Richardson
First published: London, 1740
Link to text at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6124/pg6124.txt
Word count: 225748, (376 pages)

( In which your modern, politically correct sensibilities are better left checked at the door... )