Rimbaud—a mythic name—his life as extraordinary as his work was influential in redirecting the course, first of French, and then of world poetry. He is, indeed, the very symbol of what we now call “modern” literature; nearly a hundred years before the arrival of the “mind-expanding” drugs, Rimbaud understood that the borders of the writer’s consciousness must be extended and made the deliberate attempt to use hallucination as a creative method.

Dr. Starkie, a lecturer in French literature at Oxford, has devoted many years of research to Rimbaud, revising her biography three times as new manuscript material and information about him has come to light.