Marquis de Sade
Novelist
Remembered for his libertine novels and Gothic stories, this French author and political revolutionary penned such erotic, violent, explicit, and blasphemous works as The 120 Days of Sodom and Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue. The term "sadism" is derived from his surname.
After attending Jesuit school and before becoming a writer, he fought in the Seven Years' War.
For writing the shocking works Juliette and Justine, he was imprisoned in 1801 on the order of Napoleon Bonaparte.
The son of the Count de Sade and Marie Eléonore de Maillé de Carman, he was born into Parisian aristocracy. Throughout his life, he had scandalous love affairs; his early marriage to Renée-Pélagie de Montreuil resulted in three children.
He was arrested in the early 1780s for publicly opposing Reign of Terror figure Maximilien de Robespierre.