Dangerous Liaisons began as the novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, by French author Choderlos de Laclos. Originally published over two hundred years ago Les Liaisons Dangereuses was widely read at the time as a succès de scandale (50 editions were published in his lifetime) and admired by readers such as Marie Antoinette, André Gide and Charles Baudelaire. However, the story did not regain popularity until Christopher Hampton created the play that was premiered in 1985 by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-on-Avon and later transferred to London’s West End and New York’s Broadway. Wider popularity was assured by the release of the Stephen Frears’ film Dangerous Liaisons with screenplay by Christopher Hampton in 1988, and Milos Foreman’s 1990 Valmont.

The reasons for the book’s neglect have less to do with its qualities but more with its reputation. While famed as a lurid account of aristocratic sexual high jinks, it is also an example of an outmoded form of writing. Serious readers in search of tragic uplift were disconcerted by the brilliant comedy, and those seeking a more basic thrill were put off by the attention to psychological detail. The book is a series of one hundred and seventy five letters through which the tale is recounted. The eighteenth century, in its leisure and literacy, was a great age of letter writing. It is not surprising that the epistolary novel was one of the age’s most characteristic literary forms, permitting a character to confide their innermost thoughts without the intervention of a formal narrative. Letters could also be monotonously repetitious and contrived. Being an all important method of communication and a permanent proof of deeds, the letter remains central to the action, even in the ballet version.

Christopher Hampton’s adaptation underlines the qualities an audience expects of the eighteenth century, i.e. beautiful clothes and settings, witty dialogue and aristocratic frivolity. This is in contrast to de Laclos who wrote in Mock-heroic style, which allows the writer to treat the most serious romantic subject - sexual desire - in a most rigorous and classically comic manner.

Valmont is the nearest the novel comes to a hero. Though we soon discover that Madame de Merteuil is really in charge of the plot, Valmont dominates the action. He is certainly the most attractive figure in the book. Valmont perceives his rejection of Tourvel, for whom he has a real love, as a sign of his freedom and power over women; in fact it is quite the reverse. When he claims his prize of favors from Madame de Merteuil she refuses him pointing out that the victory is hers, for it was her strength of will that persuaded Valmont to give up Tourvel. In the novel death is Valmont’s release, Cecile becomes a nun, Danceny takes a vow of celibacy and joins the Knights of Malta and Mme. de Merteuil is financially ruined and becomes hideously disfigured by smallpox.

Pierre Ambrose Francois Choderlos de Laclos was born in 1741 and pursued a military career, becoming an accomplished artillery commander. It was while he was assigned to a boring duty on a Bay of Biscay island at age forty that he determined, as he wrote to a friend, to use the time to create something "out of the ordinary, eye-catching, something that would resound around the world" and live after de Laclos’ death. The result was Les Liaisons Dangereuses, his first and only, and immediately successful, novel. (His two other writings were a treatise on women’s education and an attack on Maréchal de Vauban.) His sources for the story came from the time he spent in the garrison in Grenoble (1769 -75). There he observed the local nobility, whose morals were extremely lax, although de Laclos himself did not have a reputation for behaving badly. Instead he liked to talk with ladies and have them confide to him their love affairs.

In 1784 de Laclos married the sister of an admiral, Solange Marie Duperré, who had stated, after reading his book, that "Monsieur Laclos will never set foot in our drawing room." On hearing this statement de Laclos declared that "Within six months I will marry Mademoiselle Duperré." His seduction and conquest of Mlle. Duperré is probably the closest he ever came to being like his character Valmont. He proved to be a devoted husband writing, "For nearly twenty years now I have owed my happiness to you..."

During the French Revolution de Laclos was a Jacobin, a friend of Danton, secretary to "Philippe-Égalité" the Duc d’Orléans. He was twice jailed, but the fall of Robespierre and the end of the Reign of Terror saved him from the guillotine. At the turn of the century, Napoleon made de Laclos a brigadier general and assigned him to the Army of the Rhine and then the Army in Italy. He was transferred to Naples and placed in charge of the defense of Taranto, where he died of dysentery in 1803.