Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) was a
French poet best known for his collection
Les Fleurs du mal (1857), which expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the 19th century. The author also worked as an essayist, art critic, and translator; in the 1850s and 1860s, he published several translations of works by
Edgar Allan Poe.
Photograph: Étienne Carjat