The editor insists these letters cannot be true: their corruption, he says, could never belong to an enlightened age. Yet he presents them as a warning against the very people society would rather believe do not exist. In the glittering world of French aristocratic society, private letters carry secrets from one drawing room to the next. Choderlos de Laclos’s 1782 novel lets a whole circle speak in its own shifting voices, while the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont turn seduction and confidence into weapons—and their old intimacy into rivalry. Around them, trust becomes a vulnerability, and innocence a prize in a game whose players may not control every move. What begins as a contest of cleverness may demand more than either schemer intends to risk. Who will see through the letters before their designs take hold? With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world. Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.
