The Flowers of Evil, a collection of
poetry by
French poet Charles Baudelaire (
1821-
1867).
This is his major work, and it was first published in 1857, but he ran into legal trouble. He was prosecuted for "outrage to public decency," and he was ordered to censor six poems. He edited and enlarged the collection, and it was re-published in 1861.
The first working title(1845) of the book was The Lesbians, and the second title(1848) was Limbo. It's kind of strange that Baudelaire would want to title the work The Lesbians, because there are only three lesbian poems in the book. ('Lesbos', 'Condemned Women: Delphine and Hippolyta', and simply 'Condemned Women' {the first two were among those banned by the courts}). Perhaps he had a poem sequence in mind, but simply couldn't/didn't deliver.