Dangerous Connections

Complete and unabridged, with 59 full-page plates by Nicolas Lancret, Jean-Baptiste Pater and Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. 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.