Charles Pierre Baudelaire (April 9; 1821 - August 31; 1867) was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist; art critic; and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work; Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil); expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern; industrializing Paris during the 19th century.

Baudelaire's highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine; Arthur Rimbaud and St閜hane Mallarm?among many others. He is credited with coining the term 'modernity' (modernit? to designate the fleeting; ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis; and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.

Baudelaire worked on a translation and adaptation of Thomas de Quincey's 'Confessions of an English Opium Eater'. He contributed various articles to Eugene Crepet's 'Po鑤es francais; Les Paradis artificiels: opium et haschisch' (French poets; Artificial Paradises: opium and hashish; 1860). He smoked opium and drank to excess; causing his early death in 1867; but he is posthumously remembered as a literary giant. Pictures From History