Portal:Literature/Biography archive/2007, Week 15

Charles Baudelaire (French IPA: [ʃaʀl bod'lɛʀ]) (April 9, 1821 – August 31, 1867) was one of the most influential French poets of the nineteenth century. He was also an important critic and translator.

In 1846 and 1847 he became acquainted with the works of Edgar Allan Poe, in which he found tales and poems which had, he claimed, long existed in his own brain but never taken shape. From this time until 1865, he was largely occupied with his translated versions of Poe's works, which were widely praised. These were published as Histoires extraordinaires ("Extraordinary stories") (1852), Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires ("New extraordinary stories") (1857), Aventures d'Arthur Gordon Pym (see The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym), Eureka, and Histoires grotesques et sérieuses ("Grotesque and serious stories") (1865).