The Marquis de Sade is one of the most controversial figures in literature. He was so influential that his very name was given to the sexual practice of deriving pleasure from inflicting pain on others. His obscene works left him spending time in the Bastille, where he wrote The Lusts of the Libertines. Unthinkable in 1785, it is still disturbing today. The following section is from the Circle of Manias, the last of the three gateways into a living hell.

1. This libertine likes to sodomise beggarwomen who've starved for several days. He also likes to lock them up in his dungeon until they die of hunger; he watches closely as they suffer, wanking himself noon till night, but never discharges until the day they perish.
2. He keeps one hag in a prison cell, gradually reducing the amount of food she is given over a period of months. Each night she shits, each night he devours the diminishing turds.
3. In his youth he liked to suck a maiden's mouth and drink her saliva; now, his passion is to lock a girl up in a dungeon with food for only twenty days. On the thirtieth day he wanks over the corpse.
4. First, this libertine has a girl piss into his mouth; then he slowly destroys her by preventing her from drinking ever again, though he feeds her all the while.
5. This libertine whips a woman to shreds, then kills her through sleep deprivation.
6. This libertine used to love making a whore shit, so he might devour the turds even as they emerged, hot and steaming from her arsehole. Now he feeds her only on stale bread and cheap wine, and she soon dies of malnutrition.
7. In his youth, this libertine was a renowned cuntfucker; now he injects women with venereal diseases so virulent that they die in agony after a very short time.
8. He also adored drinking whores' vomit straight from their lips; now, he pours in a poisonous concoction which causes them swift and ghastly death from fever.
9. His greatest delight used to be digging shit from a slut's arsehole with his fingers; now, he administers enemas of boiling oil or sulphuric acid.
10. This libertine used to be a whipsman of great repute; now, he binds his victims to a pivot upon which they revolve until death intercedes.
11. He used to revel in merely slapping a whore's face; now, as a mature man, he prefers to twist her head right around until it stares backwards. In this way, he may simultaneously gloat over her tortured face and her buttocks.
12. Addicted to bestiality as a youngster, as an adult this libertine prefers to see a virgin's cunt split open by a snorting stallion; the girl invariably dies.
13. Once the greatest sodomist alive, this libertine now buries little girls up to the waist in quicklime, and keeps them there till their lower halves rot.
14. In youth, he was fond of stroking a girl's clitoris; now he has girls held down and scours their cunts with steel wool until they pass out or expire.
15. Gradually perfecting his art on various parts of the body over the years, this famous whip-wielder now thrashes a bitch from head to toe until she's flayed alive; he wears her skin to dinner.
16. This libertine used to squeeze a girl's throat during sodomy, to tighten her anus; now he ties her by a noose. A meal is placed before her, but to reach it she must strangle. Otherwise, she starves to death.
17. This libertine used to adore fondling a whore's tits and buttocks; now he lambastes them with such abominable fury that his victim soon expires in a welter of blood.
18. This libertine used to like slowly bleeding his women; now he opens up their arteries so savagely that they die within minutes.
19. In youth, this libertine would whip a naked whore around a room till she dropped from exhaustion; now, he wraps her in blankets and shuts her in a steaming bathhouse where she suffocates to death.
20. Once upon a time, he liked to be attired in nappies and fed whoreshit with a silver spoon; now he wraps a bitch so tightly in swaddling clothes that he crushes her lungs.
21. This libertine once had a great passion for bestiality; now, he likes to sew up a girl inside an untanned donkey's skin, with only her head protruding. He feeds and cares for her until the animal's hide shrinks and shoots her entrails out of her mouth.
22. Where once he hung a girl upside-down for fun, he now swings her up on a meathook till her brain drowns in blood.
23. This libertine, who used to make his sluts drunk, now funnels wine into their bellies till they explode.
24. This libertine used to tweak nipples; now he buckles an iron pot over each of his slut's breasts and lowers her onto a hot stove; the pots heat up and burn her till she dies in agony.
25. As a lad, this libertine used to watch women swim naked. Now, he throws a whore headfirst into a pond, drags her out half-drowned, and hangs her by her heels to drain her off. Once she comes to he hurls her back in, drags her out again, and so on until she expires.

Velvet Publications

The Lusts of the Libertines and many other books by the Marquis de Sade can be ordered from Creation Books.