While the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) was in prison, in an asylum, or in exile during more than three decades, the notary Gaspard Francois Xavier Gaufridy (fl. 1774-1800) was responsible for taking care of his finances and his family estates. This collection contains correspondence received by Gaufridy and others, together with related estate documents and accounts.

The correspondence includes 205 letters received by Gaufridy from the Marquis de Sade, 408 letters from the Marquise de Sade to Gaufridy and others, 1,228 letters (with relevant documents and accounts) from other correspondents to Gaufridy and others, and 47 additional documents and accounts without a personal author.

The correspondence, which contains letters from a large number of relatives, friends, lawyers, and others, provides a detailed view of the interconnections among members of the circle. For long periods the history is practically day-by-day. Some of the letters from the Marquis were written from exile, such as his stay in Italy. He inquires after his literary works, including the Paris reception of his play, Oxtiern, and his manuscripts. Some letters mention the scandalous activities of the Marquis. However, most of the correspondence concerns the management of the complicated de Sade estate holdings. It paints a vivid picture of this aspect of French life before, during, and after the Revolution.

Some of the letters (174) had been published in entire or in part by Paul Bourdin in his book, Correspondence inédite du Marquis de Sade (Paris: Libraire de France, 1929) and a few (3) had been published in entire or in part by Gilbert Lely in his book, Vie du Marquis de Sade (Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvet, 1965) before the collection was purchased by the University of Kansas Libraries from the Paris book seller, Jean Hugues, prior to 1964.

Accompanying the correspondence are manuscript and typescript notes and transcripts compiled by various University of Kansas faculty and students who worked on the collection but did not publish their findings. A card index with French summaries of the contents of the items was prepared by Ambrose Saricks, a faculty member in the Department of History from 1950-1983, and his students. Transcriptions prepared by students under the direction of Dorothy Ramona Thelander, a faculty member in the Department of Romance Languages from 1963-1966, are in modernized French. The earlier card index and original transcripts (now fragile) reflect the unsystematic order in which the collection was received and are no longer useful, since they do not relate to the present order.

In 1979, the collection was re-organized into series, first by writer and then by date, by Michel Richer, then a graduate student at the University of Kansas. In order to facilitate consulting the transcripts with the originals, a set of photocopies of the transcripts has been reorganized to match the present series arrangement.

The collection is now arranged in four series: Series A contains the original documents, series B contains photocopies of the original transcripts arranged in the present order of the original correspondence, series C contains the original transcripts of the documents. Series D contains index cards, prepared by Ambrose Saricks and his students. Series C and D are not in a systematic order and are no longer useful.

The transcription codes and catalog card numbers contain four groupings of numbers and begin with 16/, for the call number of the Gaufridy Collection MS 16. The second number is the box number and ranges from 1 through 5. The third number is the folder number and the fourth number, in parenthesis, is the item number in the order in which the collection was originally accessioned. For example: 16/2/5(30) expresses the particular item's original location at MS 16 in box 2, folder 5, item number 30.