New edition of The Flowers of Evil released

Recently, the paperback version of Professor Emeritus James McGowan’s translation of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal got a literal facelift and a new ISBN. Oxford University Press opted for a racier cover of the work, which, in his introduction, Jonathan Culler called “the most celebrated collection of verse in the history of modern poetry.” Since McGowan’s new translation appeared in 1993 it’s been a steady seller in the Oxford World’s Classics series. Les Fleurs du Mal, an acknowledged classic of French literature, contains 101 poems, many of which inspired debates on morality. It was published in 1857, 10 years before the poet’s death.