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
Paris in the 18th century into exile, and some of the most promising writers, including the poet André Chenier, went to the guillotine. In the mid-18th century, Paris became the center of an explosion of philosophic and scientific activity known as the Age of Enlightenment. The philosophic movement was led by Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued for a society based upon reason rather than faith and Catholic dogma, and for a new civil order based on natural law, and for science based on experiments and observation. The political philosopher Montesquieu introduced the idea of a separation of powers in a government, a concept which