Justine (de Sade novel) was an early work by the Marquis de Sade, written in two weeks in 1787 while imprisoned in the Bastille. It is a novella (187 pages) with relatively little of the obscenity that characterized his later writing, as it was written in the classical style (which was fashionable at the time), with much verbose and metaphorical description. A much extended and more graphic version, entitled "Justine ou Les Malheurs de la vertu" (1791) (English title: "Justine, or The Misfortunes of the Virtue" or simply "Justine"), was the first of de Sade's books published. A further extended version, "La Nouvelle Justine
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"