Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was born in Paris. Trained in law, he flouted his family's wishes that he pursue a steady career to become a writer. Baudelaire spent freely and drank copiously, becoming known as a dandy in artistic circles, but his writing also quickly gained him renown as an influential thinker and belletrist. His first poetry collection, The Flowers of Evil, published in 1857, confirmed both sides of his reputation - it was instantly influential and highly praised, but also the subject of a notorious obscenity trial. Baudelaire worked across many genres, writing art criticism, poetry, essays, and translations, notably of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Always short of money, and increasingly subject to symptoms of syphilis, he embarked on an ill-fated lecture tour of Belgium, where he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1866, rendering him unable to speak for the final months of his life. His immense influence on French and English literature, already clear in his lifetime, has lived on since his death.Philip Terry was born in Belfast, and is a poet, translator, and a writer of fiction. He has translated the work of Georges Perec, Michèle Métail and Raymond Queneau, and is the author of the novel tapestry, shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. His poetry and experimental translations include Oulipoems, Dante's Inferno, and Dictator, a version of the Epic of Gilgamesh in Globish, which refracts his experience of working with migrants in Sicily with Stories in Transit.The Penguin Book of Oulipo, which he edited, was published in Penguin Modern Classics in 2020, and Carcanet published his edition of Jean-Luc Champerret's The Lascaux Notebooks, the first ever anthology of Ice Age poetry, in April 2022. His version of Dante's Purgatorio, relocated to Mersea Island in Essex, was published in October 2024 - "A Dante like no other" (London Review Bookshop).

• Introduction 13The Flowers of Evil (1861)To the Reader 39Spleen and the IdealII The Albatross 41III Elevation 42IV Correspondences 43V “O, for those times…” 44VII The Sick Muse 46VIII The Mercenary Muse 47X The Enemy 48XI The Jinx 49XIII Bohemians on the Road 50XVII Beauty 51XVIII The Ideal 52XIX The Giantess 53XXIII The Head of Hair 54XXIV “I adore you…” 56XXV “You’d have the whole universe…” 57XXVI Sed non satiata 58XXVIII The Dancing Serpent 59XXIX A Carcass 61XXX De profundis clamavi 63XXXI Vampire 64XXXII “One night as I lay beside…” 65XXXIV The Cat 66XXXVI The Balcony 67XXXVII Obsession 69XXXVIII A Phantom 70XXXIX “I give you these lines…” 73XLI All in Its Entirety 74XLII “What will you say this evening…” 75XLIV Reversibility 76XLV Confession 77XLVII Harmonies of Evening 79XLIX Poison 80L Misty Sky 81LIII Invitation to the Voyage 82LVI Autumn Song 84LXVI Cats 86LXVII Owls 87LXVIII The Pipe 88LXIX Music 89LXX Sepulture 90LXXV Spleen (I) 91LXXVI Spleen (II) 92LXXVII Spleen (III) 93LXXVIII Spleen (IV) 94LXXXIII Heautontimoroumenos 95Parisian ScenesLXXXVI Landscape 97LXXXVIII To a Red-Haired Beggar Girl 98LXXXIX The Swan 101XC The Seven Old Men 104XCI The Little Old Women 107XCII The Blind 111XCIII To a Passer-by 112XCIV The Skeleton Labourer 113XCVI The Game 115XCIX “I have not forgotten…” 116C “The kind-hearted servant you were so jealous of…” 117CI Mists and Rains 118CII Parisian Dream 119CIII Morning Twilight 122WineCV The Ragman’s Wine 123CVI The Murderer’s Wine 125CVIII The Lovers’ Wine 128Flowers of EvilCIX Destruction 129CX A Martyr 130CXI Damned Women 133CXII The Two Good Sisters 135CXIII The Fountain of Blood 136CXV My Beatrice 137CXVI A Voyage to Cythera 139CXVII Cupid and the Skull 142RevoltCXIX Abel and Cain 143CXX Litanies of Satan 145DeathCXXII The Death of the Poor 148CXXIV The End of the Day 149CXXVI The Voyage 150Flotsam (1866)Condemned PiecesII Lesbos 159III Damned Women: Delphine and Hippolyta 162IV Lethe 166V To One Who Is Too Full of Joy 167VI Jewels 169VII The Metamorphoses of the Vampire 171GallantriesVIII The Fountain 172EpigraphsXIV Verses on the Portrait of Honoré Daumier 174XV Lola de Valence 175Diverse PiecesXX To a Girl from Malabar 176BuffooneriesXXIII Cemetery View 177The Flowers of Evil (1868)XCIX Very Far From Here 181Paris Spleen (1869)I The Stranger 185II The Old Woman’s Despair 186III The Artist’s Confession 187V The Double Room 188VI To Each His Chimera 191VIII The Dog and the Flask 192IX The Bad Glazier 193X At One O’Clock in the Morning 196XII Crowds 198XVII A Hemisphere in a Head of Hair 200XXIII Solitude 201XXV The Beautiful Dorothée 203XXVI The Eyes of the Poor 205XXVIII The Fake Coin 207XXX The Rope 209XXXIII Get Out of Your Head 213XXXIV Already! 214XXXV The Windows 216XXXVIII Which Is the Real Benedicta? 217XLI The Port 218XLIV The Soup and the Clouds 219XLV The Firing Range and the Cemetery 220XLVI Halo Missing 221XLVIII Anywhere Out of the World 222L The Good Dogs 224Correspondence (1973)Letter to Charles Asselineau, 13th March 1856 231Amœnitates Belgicæ (1986)On the Cleanliness of Belgians 237The Belgians and the Moon 238Epitaph for Belgium 239Notes 241Acknowledgements 269

"the first seer, the king of poets, a true God."