La Folie Baudelaire [signed] [first edition]

The mid-19th century metropolis was a new and, for many, a terrifying phenomenon. Like no poet before him, Charles Baudelaire captured its ephemeral, fleeting essence. In this extraordinary, genre-defying book, Roberto Calasso ranges through the poet's life and work, focusing on two painters - Ingres and Delacroix - about whom he wrote acutely. In a dazzling mosaic of stories, insights, dreams and analysis, Calasso explores Baudelaire's phantasmagorical vision of Paris - and the nature of modernity.