Although Baudelaire's poetic status is today nowhere in question - indeed the Fleurs du mal is perhaps the most familiar volume of French poetry in England - the bulk of his art-criticism, generally acknowledged to be among the finest of the nineteenth century, has until now remained untranslated into English; and even in France no edition has yet appeared with a systematic collection of illustrations. The present volume can therefore claim to be doubly a pioneer, and will prove essential to Baudelaire enthusiasts no less than to those who are primarily interested in the development of the visual arts of the nineteenth century. Many of the reproductions of works admired, or deplored, in the text are here published for the first time; and much new information is included in the notes.Today, when the general artistic scene has much that is significandy in common with that of a hundred years ago, and when the criticism of the arts tends at its best to be a frigid thing, it is valuable to return to one who not only has been called the 'first aesthetician of his age', but who held, among other opinions on the subject, that art-criticism should be ' amusing and poetic'.