The Flowers of Evil

The Flowers of Evil is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. It was important in the symbolist and modernist movements. The subject matter of these poems deals with themes relating to decadence and eroticism. The author and the publisher were prosecuted under the regime of the Second Empire as an an insult to public decency. As a consequence of this prosecution, Baudelaire was fined 300 francs. Six poems from the work were suppressed and the ban on their publication was not lifted in France until 1949. Upon reading "The Swan" Victor Hugo announced that Baudelaire had created a new shudder, a new thrill in literature.