Baudelaire, Charles

Charles-Pierre Baudelaire was born on April 9, 1821 in Paris. After the death of his father in 1827, his mother married General Aupick a year later. For the rest of his life, Charles will disapprove of this connection. He gave up his law studies and from then on moved around as a bon vivant in bohemian Parisian artistic and literary circles. There he soon made a name for himself as an art critic and provocative poet. Due to his extravagant lifestyle, he quickly squanders his father inheritance and is incapacitated by his mother. His best-known work was published in 1857, The Flowers of Evil, which caused a scandal because of its immoral content. Health impaired by syphilis and plagued by a chronic nervous condition, the poet died in Paris on August 31, 1867 at the age of forty-six.