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
Paris in the 18th century as far away as Saint Petersburg. An important feature of the Paris literary world was the literary salon, where wives of the nobility invited their friends to their homes to hear readings of new books and to discuss literature, and, later in the century, politics. The first famous Paris salon of the 18th century was that of Madame de Lambert in her town house on rue Richelieu in 1710, followed by those of Madames de Tencin, Geoffrin, Du Deffand, d'Épinay, Helvétius, and Necker. The Revolution brought an abrupt end to the literary salons, as the aristocrats were executed or forced