The Flowers of Evil and Fanfarlo

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.