From Publishers Weekly
Unlike Flaubert, notes Lloyd in her useful introduciton, Baudelaire (18211867) didn't enjoy writing letters, yet he wrote them with unfailing lucidity and, often, extraordinary intensity of feeling. Ably translated, many published in English for the first time, the letters reveal Baudelaire's harsh daily struggles, exacerbated by syphilis and financial restrictions imposed by his stepfather; his passionate faith in the poetic vocation; his literary preoccupations, particularly as brought into focus by the controversy surrounding The Flowers of Evil; and his relationships with his peers, such as Flaubert, Hugo and Sainte-Beuve, and with women, most notably his mother, who was unable to understand his bohemian lifestyle and to whom he wrote of his mental and physical sufferings with ardent candor. The volume does much to illumine Baudelaire's artistic sensibility, and as such should delight all enthusiasts of his poetry. Lecturer at Cambridge University, Lloyd is the author of Baudelaire's Literary Criticism. Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
This sensitive translation by a Baudelaire scholar will greatly aid students of Symbolism and Modernism. First, these letters, unlike Baudelaire's poems, lend themselves to adequate translation, so their information in English is reliable. Second, as Lloyd's masterly introduction tells us, Baudelaire disliked writing letters, so he wrote pithy summations. Third, the range of his correspondents (family members and financial guardian, publishers, idols like Wagner and Sainte-Beuve) elicits his assessment of both his sociocultural milieu and his own character and writing. Marilyn Gaddis Rose, Comparative Literature Dept., SUNY at BinghamtonCopyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
Undeniably one of the modern world's greatest literary figures, Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) left behind a correspondence documenting in intimate detail a life as intense in its extremes as his poetry. This extensive selection of his letters--many translated for the first time into English--depicts a poet divided between despair and elation, thoughts of suicide and intimations of immortality; a man who could write to his mother, "We're obviously destined to love one another, to end our lives as honestly and gently as possible," and say in the next sentence, "I'm convinced that one of us will kill the other"; who courted and then suffered the controversy provoked by his masterpiece, Les Fleurs du mal; who struggled throughout his life with syphilis contracted in his youth, near-intolerable financial restrictions imposed by his stepfather, and conflicting feelings of failure and revolt dating from his school days.

Writing to family, friends, and lovers, Baudelaire reveals the incidents and passions that went into his poetry. In letters to editors, idols, and peers--Hugo, Flaubert, Vigny, Wagner, Cladel, among others--he elucidates the methods and concerns of his own art and criticism and comments tellingly on the arts and politics of his day. In all, ranging from childhood to days shortly before his death, these letters comprise a complex and moving portrait of the quintessential poet and his time.





Language Notes
Text: English, French (translation)

FROM THE PUBLISHER