Les Fleurs du Mal: Rare Book of the Week

Going under the hammer later this week at Portuguese auction house ANNO is the uncensored first edition of Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire.

The opening lot in its Biblioteca de José Augusto Correia de Campos e outras proveniências sale, this copy of Les Fleurs du Mal (Paris, Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, 1857) which has an estimated of €10,000-€20,000 was limited to 1,300 copies, and includes the six poems later censored Les Bijoux, Le Léthé, À celle qui est trop gaie, Lesbos, Femmes damnées, and Les Métamorphoses du vampire. Around 230 copies of this original were seized and damaged by the Tribunal de la Seine.

The copy comes from the library of career soldier José Augusto Correia da Campos (1890-1977) who later made his name as a writer, archaeologist, and historian. It previously belonged to the Brazilian psychoanalyst, writer, and poet Carlos Fernando Fortes de Almeida (1936–2016) who was President of the Brazilian Society of Psychoanalysis and a prolific author of short stories, novels, plays, and poetry.