Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire was a French poet, art critic, and translator whose work helped shape modern poetry. His most influential collection, *Les Fleurs du mal* (1857), brought together poems of striking beauty, urban experience, and moral tension. He also wrote influential criticism on contemporary art and translated Edgar Allan Poe, while later poets such as Mallarmé, Verlaine, and Rimbaud regarded him as a major predecessor.