The Marquis de Sade in English, 1800-1850

Abstract

Based on fresh archival discoveries, this article reveals the previously untold story of the translation and circulation of Sade’s works among English readers in the first half of the nineteenth century. Conventional wisdom has been that only a select few read Sade before the twentieth century, but this article traces Sade’s reception among English Gothic novelists, the circulation of his works by the pornographers of Holywell Street, and previously undiscovered translations of the 1830s and 1840s. Sade was read by the Victorians, in far greater numbers than ever since in France or England – and they did so without realizing it.