Acknowledged, even lionized, during his own lifetime by an elite circle of writers for his genius, his spellbinding talents as a storyteller, and his resistance to positivist lessons of progress, Philippe-Auguste, Comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam sank into relative obscurity in the early twentieth century. In many respects he was the victim of his own colorful life: the heir to a resounding noble name, but poor almost to the point of abjection, aggressive in his rejection of the materialist, bourgeois ethos of his society, Villiers closely incarnated the Romantic myth of the poète maudit. During the 1880s he attained an almost legendary status with the young symbolist poets, and with good cause. Alone among his generation of writers, Villiers enjoyed a personal relationship with Charles Baudelaire. In 1869 he visited Richard Wagner in Triebschen, where he read to the great composer his play La Révolte...