Editing The 120 Days of Sodom (section)

== Reception ==
The first published versions of the novel, edited by Iwan Bloch (1904) and Maurice Heine (3 volumes, 1931–35), were limited editions intended as a compendium of sexual perversions for the use of sexologists.{{Sfn|Phillips|2001|p=34}} Sade's critical reputation as a novelist and thinker, however, remained poor prior to World War II. In 1938, [[Samuel Beckett]] wrote, "not 1 in 100 will find literature in the pornography, or beneath the pornography, let alone one of the capital works of the eighteenth century, which it is for me."{{Sfn|Beckett|2009|p=604}}

Sade received more critical attention after the war. [[Simone de Beauvoir]] in her essay "Must we burn Sade?" (published in 1951–52) argued that although Sade is a writer of the second rank and "unreadable", his value is making us rethink "the true nature of man's relationship to man".<ref>{{Harvp|Bongie|1998|p=295}}</ref>

[[Georges Bataille]], writing in 1957, stated:

{{quote|In the solitude of prison, Sade was the first man to give a rational expression to those uncontrollable desires, on the basis of which consciousness has based the social structure and the very image of man... Indeed this book is the only one in which the mind of man is shown as it really is. The language of ''Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome'' is that of a universe which degrades gradually and systematically, which tortures and destroys the totality of the beings which it presents... Nobody, unless he is totally deaf to it, can finish ''Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome'' without feeling sick.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bataille |first=Georges |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=j30nDq9su8MC&pg=PT75 |title=Literature and Evil |date=2012 |publisher=Penguin Modern Classics |isbn=9780141965970 |translator-last=Hamilton |translator-first=Alastair}}</ref>}}

Gilbert Lely considered the introduction to ''120 Days of Sodom'' to be Sade's masterpiece, although he thought the rest of the novel was marred by Sade's emphasis on coprophilia.{{Sfn|Sade|1987|p=187}} Phillips,{{Sfn|Phillips|2001|p=60}} and Wainhouse and Seaver, consider that Sade's later libertine novels have more literary merit and philosophical depth. Nevertheless, Wainhouse and Seaver conclude, "It is perhaps his masterpiece; at the very least, it is the cornerstone on which the massive edifice he constructed was founded."{{Sfn|Sade|1987|p=187}} In contrast, Melissa Katsoulis, writing in ''The Times'' of London, called the novel "a vile and universally offensive catalogue of depravity that goes far beyond kinky sex to the realms of paedophilia, torture and various other stomach-churning activities that we're all probably better off not knowing about."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Katsoulis |first=Melissa |date=23 February 2023 |title=The Curse of the Marquis de Sade |url=https://www.thetimes.com/article/the-curse-of-the-marquis-de-sade-by-joel-warner-review-dpqvrtsrd |access-date=18 October 2023 |website=[[The Times]]}}</ref>

The novel was banned in France, the United States and the United Kingdom until the 1960s. In 1947, [[Jean-Jacques Pauvert]] published the first commercial French edition. He was prosecuted for obscenity in the 1950s but continued to publish.{{Sfn|Phillips|2001|p=25}}<ref name=":12">{{Cite web |last=McMorran |first=Will |date=22 December 2016 |title='The 120 Days of Sodom' – counterculture classic or porn war pariah? |url=https://theconversation.com/the-120-days-of-sodom-counterculture-classic-or-porn-war-pariah-70374 |access-date=19 October 2023 |website=The Conversation}}</ref> In 1954, [[Olympia Press]] in Paris published an English edition translated by [[Austryn Wainhouse]] which was not sold openly in English-speaking countries.<ref name=":12" />{{Sfn|Beckett|2009|p=611|ps=note 3}} The first commercial English edition was published in the United States by Grove Press in 1966.<ref name=":12" /> In 1990 the novel was published in the prestigious French Pléiade edition, which Phillips calls a mark of "classic status".{{Sfn|Phillips|2001|p=25}} In 2016, a contemporary English translation of the novel was published as a Penguin Classic.<ref name=":22">{{Cite web |date=2021-02-22 |title=The 120 Days of Sodom: France seeks help to buy 'most impure tale ever written' |url=http://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/feb/22/the-120-days-of-sodom-france-seeks-help-to-buy-marquis-de-sade-manuscript |access-date=2021-02-22 |website=The Guardian |language=en}}</ref>