Bongie lays bare both the man and the writer, using newly discovered material in police archives to examine and reconstruct the complex relationship between the Marquis and his parents, particularly his mother. The new documentation establishes the professional and sexual misconduct of Sade's diplomat father, leading to the anger and disappointment of Sade's mother, and to a troubled family dynamic that became a significant source of Sade's transgressive ideology, in both act and text.

Detailed, original, and thoroughly investigative, Bongie's research uncovers the only certain information available to date on Sade's obscure preadolescent years and explores how it relates to Sade the author. Bongie reminds us that it was not for his ideas but for his repeated involvement in criminal sexual assaults on women that Sade -- the haughtiest of latter-day aristocrats, later a bogus revolutionary -- ended up in the Bastille.

Urging careful scrutiny of the man along with his texts, Sade: A Biographical Essay challenges the prevailing orthodoxy that has blurred the distinction between literature and pornography.