The chronically invalid son of a robust sea-captain and novelist father, Tristan Corbiere (1845-1875) published one book of verse and was virtually unheard of in his lifetime. He is an informal formalist, delighting in clashing registers of diction a...

Tristan Corbiere (1845-1875) evoked the peasants and sailors of his native Brittany, the bohemians and prostitutes of Paris, in a vivid, fast-paced language that gave a new voice to French poetry and made him a pivotal figure in the development of Mo...