Erotic literature Lifted Curtain or Laura's Education", about a young girl's sexual initiation by her father, written by the French revolutionary politician Comte de Mirabeau; also Les Liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, first published in 1782. In the late 18th century, such works as "Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue" and "120 Days of Sodom" by the Marquis de Sade were exemplars of the theme of sado-masochism and influenced later erotic accounts of Sadism and masochism in fiction. De Sade (as did the later writer Sacher-Masoch) lent his name to the sexual acts which he describes in his
18th-century French literature drawing readers by its pre-romantic depiction of nature and romantic love. Another popular example was "Paul et Virginie" by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1787). The "romans éclatés", roughly translated "Novels broken apart", such as "Jacques le fataliste et son maître" (Eng: "Jacques the Fatalist and His Master") (1773) and "le Neveu de Rameau" (Eng: "The Nephew of Rameau") (1762) by Diderot are almost impossible to classify, but resemble the modernist novels that would come a century or more later. Literary stories of people's lives were popular throughout the 18th century, with such popular books as "la Vie de mon père"