R.J. Dent's Blog

by Charles Baudelaire

Two brand new translations of works by Charles Baudelaire.

His seminal, controversial poetry collection, The Flowers of Evil, now acknowledged as one of the most important and influential poetry books ever – and Fanfarlo, Baudelaire’s only sustained work of prose fiction, an ironic self-portrait of a young man, a novella which shines a light on Baudelaire’s torrid affair with Jeanne Duval, a dancer.

The Flowers of Evil

Charles Baudelaire

‘Into this atrocious book, I put all my heart…’ – Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire’s most famous work is his masterpiece, The Flowers of Evil (1857), which shocked the nineteenth-century French literary world with its outspoken descriptions of lesbian sex, drug taking, and prostitution, as well as depictions of lost innocence due to the corrupting and oppressive power of the modern city.

Baudelaire was criticized for linking sexuality and death in several of the poems, and charged with causing offence to public decency. Six of the poems were banned and removed from the collection, and not restored to their rightful place until 1949.

Baudelaire’s highly original collection influenced a whole generation of poets including Arthur Rimbaud, Stephane Mallarme, T. S. Eliot, among many others. Baudelaire is now considered one of the greatest French poets of all time, a writer of rich and subversive poems that revolutionized poetry.

‘Both deeply disturbing and deeply moving, a book that explores the dark side of human nature with brutal honesty.’ – Sylvia Plath

‘It was Baudelaire who created modern poetry…’ – T.S. Eliot

Book details:

Title: The Flowers of Evil

Author: Charles Baudelaire

Translator: R J Dent

ISBN: TBA

Language: English

Format: Paperback

Pages: 230

Dimensions: (6 in x 9 in / 152 mm x 229 mm)

Cover Design: D M Mitchell

Publishing Date: October 2025

Publisher: Incunabula

Purchase link: https://incunabulamedia.com/r-j-dent-1

Fanfarlo

and

The Young Enchanter

Charles Baudelaire

Fanfarlo is Charles Baudelaire’s only novella, first published in 1847, ten years before the publication of The Flowers of Evil. In Fanfarlo, a semi-autobiographical tale, the protagonist, Samuel Cramer attempts to help a married woman whose husband is involved with an erotic dancer named Fanfarlo. Cramer meets Fanfarlo and is inevitably drawn to her. They begin a turbulent relationship and Cramer finds that he is torn between Fanfarlo and the married woman…

The Young Enchanter is a story of two friends who travel the world looking for a woman who has vanished without a trace. Their travels take them around the world and eventually to an isolated Turkish temple where they find dangers, deadly rituals and an answer to the mystery of the missing woman.

This is the first English translation of Charles Baudelaire’s Fanfarlo and The Young Enchanter.

Book details:

Title: Fanfarlo (and The Young Enchanter)

Author: Charles Baudelaire

Translator: R J Dent

ISBN: TBA

Language: English and French (Bilingual Edition)

Format: Paperback

Pages: 160

Dimensions: (6 in x 9 in / 152 mm x 229 mm)

Cover Design: D M Mitchell

Publishing Date: October 2025

Publisher: Incunabula

Purchase link: https://incunabulamedia.com/r-j-dent-1

Issue No 18 – Autumn 2025

The Discerning Mollusc’s Guide to Arts and Ideas.

Contributions by Emily Adams, Stephen Bett, Laurie Blauner, P.J. Blumenthal, Christopher Boucher, Marvin Cohen, Kevin Davey, W.J. Davies, R.J. Dent, Noah Drauschak, Gregory Feeley, Tom Formaro, Ron Ginzler, Jake Goldsmith, Paul Griffiths, Michael Hampton, Ernest Hilbert, Charles Holdefer, DJ Huppatz, Roy Lisker, Jean Lorrain, Carl Landauer, Kurt Luchs, Melissa McCarthy, Kat Meads, Brooke Mitchell, Sonya Moor, Fiona O’Connor, Ben Pester, Jennifer M. Phillips, Geoffrey Pitcher, Eric T. Racher, Nat Raum, David Rose, Shifra Sharlin, Mike Silverton, Hugo S. Simões, Aug Stone, Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece, Benjamin Wal, Eric Weiskott, Jon Willer, Lawrence Winkler, and Addison Zeller.

Title: Exacting Clam

Subtitle: No.18 – Autumn 2025

ISBN: 978-1-963846-57-7 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-963846-58-4 (ebook)

Language: English

Format: Paperback / ebook

Pages: 108

Publication date: 17th August 2025

Publisher: Sagging Meniscus Press

Item weight:204 g / 0.5 pounds

Dimensions:17.78 x 0.69 x 25.4 cm / 10.0 X 7.0 X 0.2 inches

Exacting Clam website: https://www.exactingclam.com/

Sagging Meniscus Press Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/p/books/exacting-clam-no-18-autumn-2025

Amazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1963846575/

Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1963846575/

Translators Aloud has shared a video of R J Dent reading from his English translation of the Marquis de Sade’s Stories, Tales, and Fables, published by Contra Mundum Press.

The excerpt R J Dent reads is from Some Thoughts on the Novel, a long essay by Sade that is part literary criticism and part writing advice.

The video can be watched here:

The book, Stories, Tales, and Fables (With Selected Non-Fiction) is published by Contra Mundum Press as is available here:

http://www.rjdent.com/stories-tales-and-fables/

Details of all of R J Dent’s works – novels, non-fiction and translations can be found here:

http://www.rjdent.com/

R J Dent now has an author page at Incunabula Media. The page includes all of the fiction, non-fiction and the translations that R J Dent has published with Incunabula.

R J Dent’s author page at Incunabula Media: https://incunabulamedia.com/r-j-dent

Tarjei Vesaas

Translated into English by R J Dent

As strange, unsettling, and memorable as The Seed, The Bridges is a remarkable novel which carries with it all the compassion, human insight, and lyrical power of all of Tarjei Vesaas’s novels. It describes the changing relationships between three teenagers—a young mother who has drowned her newborn child, and Aud and Torvil, a young couple who befriend her. Their individual reactions to the tragedy and their efforts to communicate with each other form the central theme of The Bridges.

This is a brand-new English translation of a spare, powerful, and supremely graceful novel from a giant of Norwegian literature.

Book details:

Title: The Bridges

Author: Tarjei Vesaas

Translator: R J Dent

ISBN: 978-1-300-27138-3

Language: English

Format: Paperback

Pages 180

Publisher: Incunabula

Publication Date: May 2025

Link to The Bridges at Incunabula Media: https://incunabulamedia.com/fiction-%26-non-fiction

by Tarjei Vesaas

Translated into English by R J Dent

Tarjei Vesaas’s The Seed  is set on a small, idyllic-seeming Norwegian island which is visited by a stranger during a particularly hot summer. After a young girl is murdered, the stranger is blamed and hunted down by the islanders.

The Seed convincingly portrays the collective madness of a lynch mob and the later collective shame of every individual. Tarjei Vesaas’s taut, spare prose exposes the guilt and mistrust – and the inevitable attempt at expiation that follows every act of violence.

Book details:

Title: The Seed

Author: Tarjei Vesaas

Translator: R J Dent

ISBN: 978-1-300-27154-3

Language: English

Pages: 180

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Incunabula

Publication date: May 2025

Link to The Seed at Incunabula: https://incunabulamedia.com/fiction-%26-non-fiction

With Selected Non-Fiction

by the Marquis de Sade

Translated into modern English by R J Dent

“It is said I present vice as too odious. The reason: I do not want people to be attracted to vice. I am far more moral than those who make their villains attractive. I shall only ever depict crime in the most vivid colours of hell. I want readers to see crime in all its vile nakedness, to fear it and to hate it, and so I show it in all its horror. Woe to those who dress crime in roses! Their intentions are impure, and I will never imitate them.” (The Marquis de Sade)

Written in his Bastille cell in the years between 120 Days of Sodom and Justine, this is the first English translation of the Marquis de Sade’s collection, Stories, Tales, and Fables.

Essential reading for all Sade devotees, Stories, Tales, and Fables is an introduction for those who are not yet familiar with the work of this controversial French literary innovator. The short works in this collection range from the dramatic novella, Dorci, to comic tales such as The Duped Judge. It also includes a modern translation of Sade’s controversial dramatic dialogue: Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man. Whether he is writing bawdy, exuberant comedies, supernatural tales, or human tragedies, Sade is essentially a moralist, and his exploration of the darker side of human nature remains as relevant to our society as it was to his own.

Psychologically perceptive and defiantly unconventional, Stories, Tales, and Fables reveals the compelling force of Sade’s narrative powers. An accomplished and artful fiction writer, Sade, like all great writers, asks penetrating questions about society, life, and humanity. This collection also includes a selection of Sade’s non-fiction, ranging from his insightful survey of the novelist’s art, Some Thoughts on the Novel, to his Last Will and Testament, as well as several essays about Sade’s work by renowned authors including Guillaume Apollinaire, Maurice Heine, Andre Masson, Anatole France and Paul Ėluard.

Product details:

Author: Marquis de Sade

Title: Stories, Tales, and Fables

Subtitle: With Selected Non-Fiction

Translator: R J Dent

ISBN: 978-1-9406-2572-0

Language: English

Format: Paperback

Pages: 600

Cover Art: Witches’ Flight (Vuelo de Brujas) (1798) by Francisco Goya

​Publication Date: March 2025

Publisher: Contra Mundum Press

Book details (publisher): https://www.contramundumpress.com/stories-tales-and-fables

Purchase link (Barnes and Noble): https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/stories-tales-fables-marquis-de-sade/1146849335

Purchase link (Herringbone Books): https://herringbonebooks.indielite.org/book/9781940625720

Purchase link (Bookworm of Edwards): https://bookwormofedwards.com/book/9781940625720

​

by Various Authors

Edited by Norman Conquest

A little compendium stuffed with inspired infestations of inanity — from subtle emanations to cartoon lunacy. It’s sprinkled with squirmy absurdist specimens. Indeed, this is an anthology to cherish, worship, and drool over, featuring a range of deranged artists & writers, including Ivars Balkits; Tom Barrett; Michael Cheval; Norman Conquest; R J Dent; Boris Glikman; Rhys Hughes; Mark Kanak; Allan Randolph Kausch; Amy Kurman; David Macpherson; Catulle Mendès; T. Motley; David Paddy; Doug Skinner; and Phil Demise Smith.

Absurdist Texts & Documents #50

Product details:

Title: Le Scat Noir’s Museum of the Inane

Author(s): Various

Editor: Norman Conquest

ASIN: B0F1D7JPGZ

ISBN: 979-8-9923-8261-7

Language: English

Format: Paperback

Pages: 100

Dimensions: 12.85 x 0.64 x 19.84 cm / 5.06 x 0.25 x 7.81 inches

Weight: 164.4 grams / 5.8 ounces

Publisher: Black Scat Books

Publication date: 12 March 2025)

Purchase Link (UK): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scat-Noirs-Museum-Inane/dp/B0F1D7JPGZ/

Purchase Link (US): https://www.amazon.com/Scat-Noirs-Museum-Inane/dp/B0F1D7JPGZ/

by Villiers de l’Isle-Adam

Villiers de L’Isle-Adam’s The Future’s Eve (L’Éve Future, 1886) is a visionary interrogation of technology, humanity, and ideal love. When Lord Ewald asks his friend (a fictionized Thomas Edison) to replace Alicia, his flawed lover, Edison births Hadaly, a lifelike android.

Blending science fiction, Gothic romance and Symbolist philosophy, The Future’s Eve attacks the pursuit of perfection and is considered to be the first popular depiction of artificial life. It is celebrated for its prescient themes, poetic language, and its profound commentary on the meeting of human longing and technological innovation.

By reimagining the text in twenty-first century English, R J Dent carefully preserves the novel’s essence while addressing the  linguistic complexities and challenges of the original novel. This new translation of The Future’s Eve revitalises L’Isle-Adam’s 1886 text and provides readers with a fresh, accessible, modern English version of this ground-breaking work which reflects the author’s satirical take on science.

Translated into modern English by R J Dent

Book details:

Title: The Future’s Eve

Author: Villiers de l’Isle-Adam

Translator: R J Dent

ISBN: 979-8-2306-3058-6

Language: English

Pages: 417

Format: Paperback/ebook/audiobook

Publisher: Soyos Books

Publication Date: 8th February 2025

Purchase link: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-futures-eve-villiers-de-lisle-adam/1146970946

Purchase link (US): https://www.amazon.com/Futures-Eve-Villiers-LIsle-Adam/dp/B0DWQVLTZQ/

Purchase link (UK): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Futures-Eve-Villiers-LIsle-Adam/dp/B0DWQVLTZQ/

by R J Dent

Constantly portrayed as the reclusive spinster, the dressed-in-white Belle of Amherst, Emily Dickinson has always been regarded as the epitome of American Victorianism…

However, during her lifetime she wrote poems full of erotic imagery, many dealing explicitly with the subject of sex. Defying the conventions of her era, Dickinson adopted a series of sexual personae to write poems that explored themes of sexuality.

Her refusal to publish allowed her to write with impunity. Consequently, her personae included male and female heterosexuals, lesbians, autoeroticists, masochists, sadists and necrophiles.

Emily Dickinson’s Sexual Personae is R J Dent’s in-depth study of the transgressive nature of Emily Dickinson’s poetry.

Book details:

Title: Emily Dickinson’s Sexual Personae

Author: R J Dent

Cover Artist: Jennifer Allan

ISBN: 978-1-3005-9584-7

Format: Paperback

Language: English

Pages: 370

Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.5 inches / 229 x 152 x 12.5 mm

Publisher: Incunabula

Publication date: 22nd February 2025

Purchase link (Incunabula): https://incunabulamedia.com/the-world