Poet, critic, and translator Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) was deeply affected by Gothic novels and the works of Edgar Allan Poe. A leading figure of the Decadent movement, he exercised enormous influence over subsequent poets and authors, including Rimbaud, Proust, and Eliot. He published his first and most famous book of poems, Flowers of Evil, at the age of 36 and died less than a decade later, after a life shadowed by debt, drug abuse, and disease. Translator Walter Fowlie was the James Duke Professor of French at Duke University.