Charles Baudelaire: Letters From His Youth

The ninety-five letters, discovered under floorboards in the bombed-out ruins of a villa almost a century after Baudelaire's death, provide for the first time an intimate glimpse into the childhood of this poetic genius, who was later to write Les Fleurs du Mal. (...) Written largely between the ages of eleven and twenty, they display astonishing fluency, humor, and maturity, while shedding a great deal of light on several important and previously obscured areas of Baudelaire's early life.