Editing Les Fleurs du mal (section)

==Literary significance and criticism==
[[File:Fleurs-du-mal titel.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Illustration of ''Les Fleurs du Mal'' by [[Carlos Schwabe]], 1900]]

The author and the publisher were prosecuted under the regime of the [[Second French Empire|Second Empire]] as an ''outrage aux bonnes mœurs'' ("an insult to public decency"). As a consequence of this prosecution, Baudelaire was fined 300 [[franc]]s. Six poems from the work were suppressed and the ban on their publication was not lifted in France until 1949. These poems were "[[Lesbos]]"; "Femmes damnées (À la pâle clarté)" (or "Women Doomed (In the pale glimmer...)"); "Le Léthé" (or "[[Lethe]]"); "À celle qui est trop gaie" (or "To Her Who Is Too Joyful"); "Les Bijoux" (or "The Jewels"); and "Les Métamorphoses du Vampire" (or "The Vampire's Metamorphoses"). These were later published in Brussels in a small volume titled ''Les Épaves'' (''Scraps'' or ''Jetsam'').

On the other hand, upon reading "[[The Swan (Baudelaire)|The Swan]]" (or "''Le Cygne''") from ''Les Fleurs du mal'', [[Victor Hugo]] announced that Baudelaire had created "''un nouveau frisson''{{-"}} (a new shudder, a new thrill) in literature.

In the wake of the prosecution, a second edition was issued in 1861 which added 35 new poems, removed the six suppressed poems, and added a new section titled ''Tableaux Parisiens''. Among the new poems was the widely-studied "[[L'albatros (poem)|L'albatros]]" ("The Albatross").

A posthumous third edition, with a preface by [[Théophile Gautier]] and including 14 previously unpublished poems, was issued in 1868.