The French author Charles Pierre Baudelaire (1821-1867) was the poet of the modern metropolis and was one of the first great French precursors of the symbolists. He has also been recognized as one of the 19th century's finest art critics and translators.

Charles Baudelaire was born on April 9, 1821, in Paris. His father, Joseph François Baudelaire, had been a friend of the philosophers C. A. Helvétius and A. N. de Condorcet and tutor to the young sons of the Duc de Choiseul Praslin. His mother, Caroline Archimbaut-Dufays Baudelaire, was born in London in exile in 1793 and died at Honfleur in 1871. In February 1827, when Baudelaire was not yet 6, his father's death led to a period of very close intimacy with his mother, for whom the boy felt a passionate love. Her remarriage near the end of the following year to the handsome officer Jacques Aupick must...