Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade wrote the scandalous unfinished, manuscript in 1785, but it remained unpublished until 1904.
The plot revolves around four wealthy libertines, who seal themselves inside a castle over one winter season with enslaved victims that they sexually torture and later murder.
Considered both pornographic and erotic, de Sade wrote it in secrecy while enslaved in the Bastille. After he was moved, the Bastille was attacked by revolutionaries, and he believed it to be destroyed. An unknown person saved the manuscript and gave it to a number of people.
It was purchased in 2014 by Gérard Lhéritier, a manuscript dealer who displayed it at his Museum of Letters and Manuscripts in Paris. He was later charged with fraud, and his manuscripts were seized, among them the de Sade novel.
In 2021, the French government was seeking corporate help to purchase the manuscript for the National Library of France.
