THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM BY DONATIEN ALPHONSE FRANÇOIS DE SADE, 1785 written during his imprisonment in the Bastille. His name came to label a sexual perversion, a mental illness, and he became a subject of study bordering between normal and pathological [821×1200]

In his Bastille cell, Sade spent 38 evenings copying out (but never completing) the work he had first conceived in Vincennes: 33 sheets, each 11.3 cm wide, glued end-to-end to form a strip 11.88 metres long, covered on both sides with microscopic writing between two margins. Difficult to read, easy to conceal once it was rolled up, the work has had a storied history: never given a title by Sade, stolen, hidden away for a century, then sold and exhibited as the last word in sexual deviations before becoming a surrealist totem, stolen once again and then raised to the rank of National Treasure, it finally made its way back into the “Bastille collection” conserved at the Arsenal Library from which it had been snatched [Museum link](https://www.bnf.fr/en/the-bnf-museum-collections#image-a10)

He had another completely finished book but was burnt in the storming of the Bastille, then you understand why he wrote all those things.