The prose is lively, passionate, even humorous, and scrupulously researched.
Mary Ann Caws, Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature Graduate School, City University of New York:
Rosemary Lloyd's superb new interpretation and retranslation of Baudelaire and his world will astonish only those who are not acquainted with her previous work on Baudelaire and Mallarmé. With her elegant expression and highly active intelligence, her unfailing sense of rhythm and tone in reading and in translation, and her sure and extended knowledge of the poet's background and poems, she manages to create a new domain where writer, reader, and critic can find a common and uncommon joy.
Rosemary Lloyd's latest book brings a fresh approach to Baudelaire studies, thanks to the savvy use of English translations to stress elements easily lost or unappreciated by non-French readers.... Although not a biography in the full sense, her study avoids separating the man and the work. Lloyd wants to indicate how a reading that honors the complexities of his writings might proceed. And in this respect Baudelaire's World achieves its goal.... Accompanied by some previously unpublished illustrations and printed in an edition at once environmentally responsible and esthetically attractive, Rosemary Lloyd's Baudelaire's World makes a nice acquisition for undergraduate as well as graduate libraries. For Baudelaire specialists there are some excellent finds—such as the plate from Francois Baudelaire's illustrated Latin vocabulary—as well as Lloyd's exemplary translations and shrewd assessments of other translations. Specialists will also be usefully directed to lesser-known aspects of the many-sided Baudelaire. For the non-specialist seeking an introduction, Baudelaire's World is a fine place to start: thorough, balanced, thoughtful, amusing and pleasingly written.
Lloyd's objective is to scrutinize the culture and influences that shaped the French poet. She does not recapitulate his life, except to illustrate something in the verse.... Few conventional biographies, though, offer so clear a picture of personality and thought process as does Lloyd's critical study.
Drawing on her own translations as well as those of other poets, Lloyd offers a lively discourse on the possibilities and limitations of translation. For academic libraries with large collections of poetry and poetic criticism.
Sonya Stephens, Royal Holloway, University of London, author of Baudelaire's Prose Poems: The Practice and Politics of Irony:
Baudelaire's World brings into sharp focus the cultural context, thematic concerns, formal challenges, artistic debates, and biographical details necessary to unlock the complexities of this important nineteenth-century figure. Rosemary Lloyd invites us to embark on a journey which is, at least in part, an exploration of reading. Through engaging discussion and close analysis of key poems and comparative translations, she works out the condensation of themes that defines Baudelaire's writing. Lloyd's meticulous scholarship and acute understanding of Baudelaire, and especially of Baudelaire in English translation, make the complete range of his works (poetry, criticism, journals, correspondence) accessible to the Anglophone reader.
Dorothy M. Betz, Georgetown University:
Baudelaire would have liked this book. As Rosemary Lloyd takes up a range of topics that fuse into a reading of Baudelaire's text, her book adopts a pattern not unlike the fusion of images in the poetry. Returning motifs, especially the recurring use of 'Le Cygne,' tie the thematic chapters together and give the reader a pleasant sense of familiarity.
Translators are moody darlings—here ecstatic, there mischievous and ready to betray—and criticism is not more faithful either. Aware of this predicament, Lloyd does not only propose a reading but, most significantly, provides a rich ground on which other readings can be drawn. Ultimately, Baudelaire's World has many entries, and many streets entice the reader with illicit charms.