ABSTRACT
Baudelaire (1821–67) probably first became interested in Poe through reading Mme Isabelle Meunier's translations of ‘The Black Cat’ and ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ in a Paris paper in 1847. Baudelaire later said that these ‘fragments’ aroused in him ‘singular excitement’ and ‘incredible sympathy’. He translated ‘Mesmeric Revelation’ in 1848; but he did not become fully aware of Poe's symbolic importance until he read John Daniel's review essay in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1850. This essay became the basis of Baudelaire's own ‘Edgar Allan Poe, sa vie et ses ouvrages’, published in the Revue de Paris in 1852. By this time, Poe was a central figure in Baudelaire's imagination — a doomed, alienated artist in a materialistic society — and he began to translate his work with a missionary zeal. The first volume of Les Histoires extraordinaires, prefaced by a revised version of the 1852 study, appeared in 1856; other volumes followed in 1857, 1858, 1863, and 1865.
