Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos (French pronunciation: ​[pjɛʁ ɑ̃brwaːz ʃɔdɛʁlo də laklo]; 18 October 1741 – 5 September 1803) was a French novelist, official and army general, best known for writing the epistolary novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons). A unique case in French literature, he was for a long time considered to be as scandalous a writer as the Marquis de Sade or Nicolas-Edme Rétif. He was a military officer and an amateur writer with a cynical outlook on human relations. However, he aspired to "write a work which departed from the ordinary, which made a noise, and which would remain on earth after his death"; he surely attained his goals with the lasting fame of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which is now widely acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of literature of the 18th century. Les Liaisons Dangereuses has inspired a number of critical and analytic commentaries, plays, and films.