Stéphane Mallarmé is one of France's four major poets of the second half of the nineteenth century, along with Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud. Although he was recognized as such during his lifetime, much of his poetry was acknowledged to be difficult to understand because of its tortuous syntax, ambiguous expressions, and obscure imagery. Since his lifetime, critics have continued to disagree as to the precise interpretations of many of his later works.

Stéphane Mallarmé--as he is always known, although his birth certificate records his first name in its more usual French form of "Etienne"--was born into a middle-class family on 18 March 1842 in Paris. After a generally undistinguished school career he spent a year in London, from November 1862 to November 1863, to gain a certificate entitling him to teach English, and on his return to France he took a...