<sod>  ==Life and work==
 Baudelaire was born in [[Paris]]. His father, who was a [[civil servant]] in good position and an [[amateur]] [[artist]], died in [[1827]], and in the following year his mother married a [[lieutenant colonel]] named Aupick, who was afterwards an [[ambassador]] of France at various [[court]]s. Baudelaire was [[education|educated]] at [[Lyons]] and at the [[Collège Louis-Ie-Grand]] in Paris. On faking his [[degree]] in [[1839]] he determined to enter on a literary career, and during the next two years pursued a very irregular way of life, which led his [[guardian]]s, in [[1841]], to send him on a voyage to [[India]]. When he returned to Paris, after less than a year's absence, he was of age; but in a year or two his extravagance threatened to exhaust his small [[patrimony]], and his family obtained a [[decree]] to place his [[property]] in trust. 
 
His [[salons]] of [[1845]] and [[1846]] attracted immediate attention by the boldness with which he propounded many views then novel, but have since been generally accepted. He took part with the [[revolutionary|revolutionaries]] in [[1848]], and for some years interested himself in [[republican]] politics, but his permanent convictions were [[aristocrat]]ic and [[Catholic]]. Baudelaire was a slow and fastidious worker, and it was not until [[1857]] that he produced his first and famous volume of [[poem]]s, ' 'Fleurs du mal' '. Some of these had already appeared in the ' 'Revue des deux mondes' ', when they were published by Baudelaire's friend Auguste Poulet Malassis, who had inherited a [[printing]] business at [[Alencon]]. The consummate [[art]] displayed in these [[verse]]s was appreciated by a limited public, but general attention was caught by the perverse selection of [[morbid]] subjects, and the book became a by-word for unwholesomeness among conventional [[critic]]s. [[Victor Hugo]], writing to the poet, said ' 'Vous dotez le ciel de l'art d'un rayon macabre, vous créez un frisson nouveau' '. Baudelaire, his [[publisher]], and the [[printer]] were successfully [[prosecution|prosecuted]] for offending against public [[morality|morals]]. In the prefatory poem of ''"[[Les fleurs du mal]]"''  Baudelaire accuses his readers of being as guilty of sins and lies as the poet:
 
 :''... If rape or arson, poison, or the knife
 :Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff
 <eod> <sod> ==Life and work==
 Baudelaire was born in [[Paris]]. His father, who was a [[civil servant]] in good position and an [[amateur]] [[artist]], died in [[1827]], and in the following year his mother married a [[lieutenant colonel]] named Aupick, who was afterwards an [[ambassador]] of France at various [[court]]s. Baudelaire was [[education|educated]] at [[Lyons]] and at the [[Collège Louis-Ie-Grand]] in Paris. On faking his [[degree]] in [[1839]] he determined to enter on a literary career, and during the next two years pursued a very irregular way of life, which led his [[guardian]]s, in [[1841]], to send him on a voyage to [[India]]. When he returned to Paris, after less than a year's absence, he was of age; but in a year or two his extravagance threatened to exhaust his small [[patrimony]], and his family obtained a [[decree]] to place his [[property]] in trust. 
 
His [[salons]] of [[1845]] and [[1846]] attracted immediate attention by the boldness with which he propounded many views then novel, but have since been generally accepted. He took part with the [[revolutionary|revolutionaries]] in [[1848]], and for some years interested himself in [[Republicanism|republican]] politics, but his permanent convictions were [[aristocrat]]ic and [[Catholic]]. Baudelaire was a slow and fastidious worker, and it was not until [[1857]] that he produced his first and famous volume of [[poem]]s, ' 'Fleurs du mal' '. Some of these had already appeared in the ' 'Revue des deux mondes' ', when they were published by Baudelaire's friend Auguste Poulet Malassis, who had inherited a [[printing]] business at [[Alencon]]. The consummate [[art]] displayed in these [[verse]]s was appreciated by a limited public, but general attention was caught by the perverse selection of [[morbid]] subjects, and the book became a by-word for unwholesomeness among conventional [[critic]]s. [[Victor Hugo]], writing to the poet, said ' 'Vous dotez le ciel de l'art d'un rayon macabre, vous créez un frisson nouveau' '. Baudelaire, his [[publisher]], and the [[printer]] were successfully [[prosecution|prosecuted]] for offending against public [[morality|morals]]. In the prefatory poem of ''"[[Les fleurs du mal]]"''  Baudelaire accuses his readers of being as guilty of sins and lies as the poet:
 
 :''... If rape or arson, poison, or the knife
 :Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff
 <eod>