This is an account and an interpretation of Baudelaire's work; of his life; of his times. And it is a biography not of his outward life alone but of that inner personality which is reflected so intimately in his poetry. In it is restated the view that Les Fleurs du Mal is a depiction of the struggle between man's aspiration towards virtue and his proclivity towards vice; and of a divided human nature in which each part--the good and the bad--gains some intenser quality from its opposite. Insight, scholarship, awareness, and unrivalled knowledge both of Baudelaire's work and of the world he lived in, all combine to make this a book of major interest and of major importance.