Intimate Journals

Synopsis

One of the most influential French poets of the nineteenth century, Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) was also an important art critic and translator. In fact, his translations of Edgar Allan Poe's works are considered classics of French prose. Throughout much of his life, however, Baudelaire was dismissed as a vulgar drug addict preoccupied with sex and death. Prosecuted for obscenity and reeling from one financial disaster to another, he produced a number of literary works that went unrecognized during his lifetime.