SOURCE: "Sade and His Critics," in The Marquis de Sade, Twayne Publishers, 1984, pp. 122-32.

Lynch has published several books and articles on eighteenth-century French literature. In this excerpt, he reviews the influence of Sade's writings and his critical reception in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Sade in the Nineteenth Century

Sade's last three contributions to literature, the trilogy of historical novels, did not attract much attention, a fact that is quite understandable when one recalls that two of them remained unpublished until 1953-54. But Sade's reputation had already been fixed at the turbulent conclusion of the eighteenth century, and we have seen ample proof of its "infamous" nature. Furthermore, when we compare the literary trends which dominated the first part of the nineteenth century to the content of Sadian fiction, we can readily understand the relative silence on him before 1860. Although the restored Bourbon regime and the July...