Laclos, Pierre Ambroise, Choderlos de

Laclos, Pierre Ambroise, Choderlos de (1741-1803), French army officer, politician, and novelist. Born in Amiens to a newly ennobled family, he entered the artillery school at La Fère. At the age of 18, he planned but failed to sail for America. Unable to satisfy his military ambitions, he began to write. After a tentative start with some verse and a few opera libretti, he published, in 1782, Les Liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Connections—or, Letters collected in a society, and published for the instruction of other societies, 1784) an unconventional novel which immediately brought the author immense success.

Written in epistolary form, the plot is one of seduction and love, and its consequences. Searching and minute psychological analyses, a versatile style which reveals each character through his or her letters, and the verisimilitude of the action all combine to make the novel a masterpiece of French literature. It has been adapted several times for the cinema as Les Liaisons dangereuses by Roger Vadim, Dangerous Liaisons by Stephen Frears, and Valmont by Milos Forman.

His later works De l'éducation des femmes, published in 1783, several political addresses, and two short works of literary criticism are markedly inferior to this novel. Laclos is accordingly something of a literary enigma. After the success of the novel, he became secretary to the Duc d'Orléans, accompanying him to London in 1789. He directed the Journal des Jacobins, and was imprisoned in 1793, being released in December 1794 and narrowly escaping the guillotine. He settled into family life until 1800, when Napoléon promoted him to the rank of General of Brigade. He was later appointed director of the artillery at Naples, and died of fever during the siege of Taranto.