The story of: the Marquise de Sade is inevitably linked to that of her husband, but Renee Pelagie de Montreuil gains the consideration she never received in her lifetime in this book by "one of the world's most distinguished scholars of Sade's work" -- The Independent. Who was Sade's wife? And why did she love him so devotedly for almost thirty years? Crosland competently shows how the Sade marriage symbolized the decay of the old aristocracy, and conveys the struggle of one individual to establish her personal identity at a time in France when women had virtually no rights of their own.