This carefully curated anthology brings together a broad selection of timeless works in one digital edition. Readers can discover essential voices, memorable stories and enduring ideas across a rich variety of literary styles. Prepared for comfortable continuous reading, this collection is ideal for exploring classic literature or returning to lasting favorites.

Choderlos de Laclos Pierre – Les Liaisons dangereuses : Promis à la vie militaire en tant que cadet d’une famille récemment anoblie, l’officier d’artillerie Pierre Choderlos de Laclos végète dans des garnisons de province où il participe cependant à la vie mondaine. Déçu dans ses ambitions militaires, il décide de frapper un grand coup littéraire. “Je résolus de faire un ouvrage qui sortît de la route ordinaire, qui fît du bruit et qui retentît encore sur la terre quand j’y aurais passé …”...

The complex moral ambiguities of seduction and revenge make Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. The subject of major film and stage adaptations, the novel's prime movers, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, form an unholy alliance and turn seduction into a game - a game which they must winPierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos was a French novelist, official and army general, best known f...

The novel is an epistolary work, meaning it is composed of letters exchanged between various characters. It takes place in the French aristocratic society of the 18th century and centers around the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, two former lovers and manipulative individuals who derive pleasure from seducing and manipulating others.The Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont engage in a cruel game of seduction and deceit, using their wit and charm to manipulate th...

The novel is composed entirely of letters exchanged between the various characters, which provides an intimate and voyeuristic look into their thoughts, emotions, and machinations. The story revolves around the manipulative and cunning Marquise de Merteuil and the seductive Vicomte de Valmont, who engage in a game of seduction and manipulation, using their sexual conquests as a means to seek revenge and exert power over others.Throughout the novel, the characters engage in intricate plots ...

First published in 1782, French author Pierre Ambroise Francois Choderlos de Laclos’s novel "Dangerous Liaisons" (Les Liaisons dangereuses), a popular example of the epistolary novel (a work of fiction that takes the form of letters or other documents), tells the story of two wicked ex-lovers who amuse themselves by manipulating and seducing a pious married woman and a virtuous young maiden.Laclos’s first novel, "Dangerous Liaisons" caused an immediate sensation and has be...

Set in France during the Ancien Régime, Dangerous Liasons is an extraordinary tale of intrigue and moral depravity where our rival protagonists use seduction as a weapon.The Marquise de Mertheuil and the Vicomte de Valmont scheme and plot; one obsessed by her own vanity, the other by his lust for a virtuous, married woman. In the pursuit of their own entertainment, de Mertheuil and de Valmont play a dangerous game of seduction, attempting ...

Two bored aristocrats corrupt a convent girl and a devout wife as a wager, and record every move in letters to each other. Laclos was an artillery officer who wrote it to make a name and succeeded so completely that he was suspected of being one of his own characters; all four volumes are here. This edition carries all four volumes in Thomas Moore's translation, with fifty-nine plates after Lancret, Caraffe, Regnault and Chardin, painted between 1701 and 1805.

What is a novel? A correct picture of morals put in motion.-What should be the aim of a novel? To blend instruction with amusement.-When the morals of the actors are corrupt, is it allowable, with deference to decency, to draw them in their proper shades and colours? Undoubtedly it is; but with the greatest caution, lest by giving vice, whose contagion must be dreaded, its true, though seducing and agreeable aspect, without resisting, diminishing, or rendering useless, the effect it may pr...

The second volume in this essential library gathers James Joyce's modernist vision, Mark Twain's American wit, Jules Verne's boundless imagination, Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure and suspense, Oscar Wilde's epigrammatic brilliance, and Bram Stoker's gothic terror alongside voices from Tolstoy to Tagore, Stendhal to Sienkiewicz. Ranging from French Enlightenment fiction to Victorian sensation novels, Russian realism to early global literature, this collection widens the canon begun in V...

The complex moral ambiguities of seduction and revenge make “Dangerous Liaisons” (1782) one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. Its prime movers, the Viscount de Valmont and the Marchioness de Merteuil — gifted, wealthy, and bored — form an unholy alliance and turn seduction into a game. And they play this game with such wit and style that it is impossible not to admire them, until they discover mysterious rules that they cannot understand. In the ensuin...

Les Liaisons dangereuses (French pronunciation: [le ljɛ.zɔ̃ dɑ̃.ʒə.ʁøz]; Dangerous Liaisons) is a French epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, first published in four volumes by Durand Neveu from March 23, 1782.It is the story of the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, two rivals (and ex-lovers) who use seduction as a weapon to socially control and exploit others, all the while enjoying their cruel games and boasting about their manipulative talents. It has b...