The life of Thiophile Gautier is of peculiar interest to men of letters, especially to that large proportion of them who, like Thiophile, are "polygraphes." Our ancestors more briefly termed them "hacks," and, since Dr. Johnson, or, at least, since Southey, there has been no hack so distinguished as[...]

Among the earliest artistic accounts of the hallucinogenic experience in European literature, the four pieces in this volume document Gautier and Baudelaire's own involvement in the Club of Assassins, who met under the auspices of Dr Moreau to investigate the psychological and mind-enhancing effects[...]