Charles-Pierre Baudelaire was born in Paris in 1821. His first publication was Le Salon de 1845, and he earned renown as an art critic and as a translator of Edgar Allan Poe. As a poet, his fame rests on Les Fleurs du mal. The collection was published in 1857, and certain poems were condemned as an offence against public morals; the book is now considered one of the masterpieces of nineteenth-century French literature. Baudelaire went to Brussels, where he hoped to earn money by lecturing; but his hopes foundered, his health gave way, and he was taken back to Paris, where he died in 1867.
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