Charles Baudelaire - Les fleurs du mal. Illustrations de Rochegrosse - Tirage Collector - Tranches dorées

On 31 May 1949, the Court of Cassation quashed the original trial, which had found Beaudelaire and his publisher guilty of indecent assault. 6 poems were banned from publication for many years. In 1910, the publisher F. Ferroud published a superb edition of Les Fleurs du mal illustrated by the famous Rochegrosse. His full-page drawings were reproduced in 7 finely coloured etchings. The headbands and endpapers were wood-engraved. Ferroud printed it again in 1917 and 1928. It is the 1917 edition that remains remarkable, as it was printed in an edition of 1,200 copies; 200 were printed on magnificent imperial Japanese paper with 2 or even 3 states of the etchings. The woodcuts were even printed separately at the end of the book on china paper. It is this superb edition that we have used for our reprint. Our edition consists of 320 pages in the original 130x190 mm format. The finely coloured etchings have been reproduced in colour, and we have added a state of the engravings before the letter. The text has been entirely recomposed, respecting the original layout. The quires are sewn and the covers are hardback. Emmanuel Pierrat, lawyer and writer, has done us the honour of writing an introduction to the trial and the Court of Cassation ruling of May 1949.