Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) was a French poet and critic, born in Paris on 9 April 1821. He grew up in a changing city and, after a difficult relationship with his stepfather and a restless youth, set out to live by his pen. He wrote art and literary criticism, translated the American writer Edgar Allan Poe into French, and produced one great book of verse, The Flowers of Evil, which led to a trial for offending public morals. His later years were marked by debt and poor health, and he died in Paris on 31 August 1867. Baudelaire matters because he gave poetry the modern city, with its crowds, boredom, beauty and loneliness, as a serious subject. His prose poems and essays on modern life helped shape later poets and artists across Europe and beyond.