The Flowers of Evil

xxxvi, 201, [1] pp. Tall 8vo. Maroon full leather, gilt titles and decorations, all edges gilt, silk moire endpapers, ribbon marker bound in. Translated into English by various authors, most notably Edna St. Vincent Millay, and edited with introduction and notes by James Laver. Illustrated with engravings by Pierre-Yves Tremois. Banned and slighted in his lifetime, the book that contains all of Baudelaire's verses has opened up vistas to the imagination and quickened sensibilities of poets everywhere. Yet it is questionable whether a single translator can give adequate voice to Baudelaire's full poetic range. In compiling their classic, bilingual edition of The Flowers of Evil, the late Marthiel and Jackson Mathews chose from the work of forty-one translators to create a collection that is "a commentary on the present state of the art of translation."