Germain Nouveau (1851-1920), poet and painter, friend of Rimbaud and Verlaine, discreet disciple of Mallarme, led a vie de boheme while composing poems of both religious and erotic inspiration. This book is both a biographical study and an introduction to the works of a long-neglected poet whose calligraphy is to be found in the manuscript of Rimbaud's famous Illuminations. Breton, Aragon, and Eluard acknowledged their debt to this undervalued precursor of French Surrealism.