Boxing Babylon

Chronicles the lives and careers of professional boxers, contrasting their success in the ring with their frequently tragic personal lives, arguing that boxing is a mirror reflecting the noble and dark sides of the human soul

Charles-Pierre Baudelaire was born in Paris in 1821. His first publication was Le Salon de 1845, and he earned renown as an art critic and as a translator of Edgar Allan Poe. As a poet, his fame rests on Les Fleurs du mal. The collection was published in 1857, and certain poems were condemned as an offence against public morals; the book is now considered one of the masterpieces of nineteenth-century French literature. Baudelaire went to Brussels, where he hoped to earn money by lecturing; but his hopes foundered, his health gave way, and he was taken back to Paris, where he died in 1867.