Rimbaud called him ‘le premier voyant, roi des poetes, un vrai dieu’, and the history of modern poetry, which begins with him, has borne out that opinion. This is a comprehensive new translation of all Baudelaire’s poetry, excluding only the juvenilia, occasional verse and work of doubtful attribution. It includes all the poems published in the first (1857) and second (1861) editions of the book, as well as those added to the third (1868), published after the poet’s death. Baudelaire contemplated a volume of poems that would ‘launch him into the future like a cannonball’, and here it is in vivid and formally authoritative translation.