Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the most famous names in twentieth-century philosophy, published a book-length examination of Baudelaire in 1950, commenting on the complexity of the poet's vision. Titled Baudelaire, it is available from New Directions Press.

Before the publication of Les Fleurs du Mal, Charles Baudelaire was already famous for his translations of the poetry and prose of American writer Edgar Allan Poe, for whom he had great empathy. A good source for Poe's poetry is Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales, edited by Patrick F. Quinn and published by Viking Press in 1984.

Though he wrote decades before the writers usually grouped together as French symbolists, Baudelaire is sometimes talked about as the earliest writer of that movement. Examples of the most significant poets of French symbolism are gathered in Four French Symbolist Poets: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine and Mallarmé. It...