Beaudelaire

It's the birthday of poet Charles Baudelaire, (books by this author) born in Paris (1821). His father died and his mother remarried a man he couldn't stand, who sent him off to military school, but he got kicked out right before graduation. He inherited a small fortune, but he spent so much on clothes, entertainment, and drugs that soon he had squandered half of it. His family took away what was left and doled it out in small, regular increments. So he started writing to make money; essays, criticism, and translations. Although he is remembered as a poet, he only published one book of poems, Les fleurs du mal (1857, The Flowers of Evil). He died at the age of 46, probably from syphilis.
Writer's Almanac