1821	Charles Pierre Baudelaire was born in Paris on 9 April, 13 rue Hautefeuille, as the son of Francois Baudelaire (*1759 in Neuville-au-Pont) and Carolina Archimbaut-Dufay (*1793 in London). Baudelaire's father was the tutor in the family of the Duke de Choiseul-Praslin, later the senior clerk at the office of the High Assembly.
1827	The poet's father passes away on 10 February at the age of sixty-seven. In summer of this year, six-year old Charles Baudelaire lives with his mother in a small house in Neuilly on the outskirts of Paris. A happy childhood summer, on which he reminisced all his life.
1828	8 November Baudelaire's mother remarries. Her second husband is the thirty-nine year old major Jacques Aupick.
1832	Aupick is stationed in Lyons, where Baudelaire attends school.
1836	Aupick is transferred to Paris, where Baudelaire attends Lycée Louis-le-Grand.
1838	Charles Baudelaire travelled over Pyrenees, he's attempting to write a first own poetry experiments.
1839	Baudelaire is excelled from school for refusing to surrender a note passed to him but is allowed to take his Baccalauréat exam (which he passed).
1841	Sent by his parents on a voyage to India designed to remove him from his bohemian milieu, Baudelaire disembarks in Mauritius and Réunion and, refusing to go further, return to Paris. Becomes involved with Jeanne Duval, a mulatto actress with whom he lives off and on for most of his life.
1843	- Escapist and non-systematic literary works; an attempt at a verse drama (conceived with Ernest Prarond, but uncompleted Idéolus). Apart from anonymous cooperation on a verse almanac, prepared by young poets, and the first, aggressive and provocative studies, which editors return to him, create the foundation of the later Flowers of Evil. At the end of this period, in September 1844, based on the incentive of family advice and the decision of the civil court in Paris, Charles Baudelaire is appointed a financial minder, Mr. Ancell, a notary from Neuilly.
1845	Baudelaire published his debut at the Parisian publishers Labitt, signed as Ch. Baudelaire-Dufas. It is the Salon de 1845, a seventy-page brochure, analysing the annual exposition of that same year. Conflicts with his family; a suicide attempt without a clear motive. The poet prints his first prosaic work (How we pay debts, if we have a genius); the following year he published another Salon (1846), a critical study of exceptionally high standards at the publisher Michel Lévy. First mention of publishing a book of verse this year; its announced title is The Lesbians (Les Lesbiennes). Cooperation with magazines (Corsaire Satan) from 1846.
1847	He publishes Fanarlo, a novel with a number of autobiographical characteristics in the role of Samuel Cramer. Gustave Courbet paints Baudelaire's portrait. The painting called Man With a Pipe, which now hangs on display in Montpellier's museum, was not accepted by the Salon's panel of judges (another portrait by Courbet is a part of his allegorical Atelier, a pivotal work by the artist from 1855). An important letter addressed to the actress Marie Daubrun (her real name is Marie Brunaud), the woman with green eyes, to whom some of the most beautiful poems of the Flowers of Evil have been devoted (Invitation to the voyage, Autumn sonnet, Conversation).
1848	Charles Baudelaire becomes a member of the Central Republican Association of Blanque. In relation to this he engages in the revolution events of February and participates in events of the working class rebellion in June. In the same year he attempts to publish - with his friends Champfleur and Toubin - the socialist paper (Le Salut public), which however ceases to exist after just two issues. During the same period, two back-firing attempts to establish financial security as an editorial secretary, firstly - from April to June - at the conservative La Tribune, then - during October - in Le Representant de l`Indre (in Chateauroux). After several days the poet returns to Paris from here. His stepfather, now a general, Jacques Aupick, is delegated the envoy extraordinaire in Constantinople. In the ensuing year (1849), when the publisher Michel Levy announces the issue of the prepared book of poems, this time under the name Limbo (Les Limbes), he apparently attempts to succeed as an editor again; his journey to Dijon probably had this aim. During his stay in Dijon, secondary signs of luetic disease begin to manifest themselves. Charles Baudelaire is back in Paris at the beginning of 1850.
1851	He publishes a study On Wine and Hashish in the magazine Le Messager de l'Assemblée, a study which can be considered the first - independent and complete - draft of the famous book Artificial Paradises (Les paradis artificiels), which was issued in 1860 by the publisher Poulet-Malassis and de Brois. In June of the same year his mother briefly visits Baudelaire along with ambassador Aupick, who has been transferred to Madrid to perform the same function. The poet obtains a collection of the works of Edgar Allan Poe from England - apparently The Works of the late Edgar Allan Poe, published by J. R. Redfield, Clinton Hall, New York, 1850.
1852	First translations of Edgar Allan Poe's work, which he submits to the publisher Victor Lecou, are not printed because the poet requested their return for reworking. Love verses sent anonymously to Mrs. Aglaé Sabatier.
1853	While Jacques Aupick is retuning to Paris and is named senator, Charles Baudelaire is experiencing a period of the worst poverty. He is seriously ill - with Jeanne Duval - almost completely without financial resources. In the same year he publishes the essay the Moral of Play in Le Monde Littéraire.
1854	The poet meets the writer Barbey d'Aurevilly, the author of An Elderly Mistress and She-Devils.
1855	General Jacques Aupick buys a moderately sized house for himself and his wife in Honfleur (the province of Calvados), on the seaside not far from the mouth of the River Seine. Conflicts with Jeanne Duval, dragging on for years, are accompanied by another serious split.
1856	Michel Lévy publishes the first volume of translations of the works of Edgar Allan Poe: Extraordinary Stories (Histoires extraordinaires). On 28 April Jacques Aupick dies in Paris. Soon after the death of her second husband, the poet's mother definitely moves to the house in Honfleur, where she lives securely from pension.
1857	Based on a contract for a book of poems, signed on 30 December 1856 with the publisher Auguste Poulet-Malassis and de Brois, the poet submits a copy to the publisher in March 1857; the book is released on 25 June of the same year, on 5 June an attack at the Flowers of Evil is printed in Figaro and on 16 June the book is confiscated based upon a state order. The charges against the author and both publishers are negotiated on 20 September 1857; six poems are suppressed (Lesbos - Condemned Women - Lethe - To One Who is Too Cheerful - The Jewels - The Metamorphoses of the Vampire); the author is charged a fine in the total of three hundred francs, and both publishers receive a one hundred franc fine. In the same year the first six pieties from Small Prose Poems are printed (in Le Present). Baudelaire also prints several essays and new verses in Le Present; he publishes a study on Gustav Flaubert in the Artiste revue. At Michel Lévy's a second volume of Poe's works is published: The New Extraordinary Stories. At the end of the year the poet is forced - for the second time - to request for financial support from the Ministry of Education. In a letter to Aglaé Sabatier he admits that all verses on pages 84 - 105 of the published book were written for her.
1858	Baudelaire has a very serious dispute with his notary Ancell, whom he blames for unethical intervention into his private life. In spring of the same year he departs for Corbeil, where he edits the translations of Poe's works, printed there for the publisher Michel Lévy. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym was published as the third volume of Poe's works in April.
1859	Baudelaire begins visiting his mother in Honfleur; his relationship with her was renewed and strengthened after the death of his father. During his February stay in 1859 there, he writes the Journey, devoted to Flaubert's friend Maxim de Camp and publishes the same year in Revue Francaise. Jeanne Duval, whom the poet continues to support despite the split, becomes gravely ill.
1860	1 January Charles Baudelaire signs a contract with the publisher Auguste Poulet-Malassis on issuing his works in four volumes (The Flowers of Evil - Artificial Paradises - Aesthetic Curiosities - Literary Studies). In the middle of January he experiences a brain failure, entirely of temporary character this time. At the beginning of the year the poet hears Wagner's concerts in the Salle des Italiens. The Ministry of Education grants him - for the fourth time - support in the total of three hundred francs, motivated as an exceptional reward for his studies on visual arts. He receives another literary reward at the end of November of the same year.
1861	- The second edition of the Flowers of Evil is released, expanded by thirty-five new poems; the suppressed poems are not included. Soon afterwards it is issued periodically (in Revue Européenne) and then as a separate brochure of the studies on Richard Wagner. New reward in the total of three hundred francs. Other more threatening signs of his old illness. His mental and material situation is catastrophic; nevertheless he often publishes and surrounds himself with - often unrealised - literary plans. Failed attempt for candidature into the Academy.
1863	The bankruptcy of publisher Poulet-Malassis also directly affects Baudelaire with the annulment of the prepared four-volume issue of his works. In November he publishes one of his most significant studies in Figaro, devoted to the painter and sketcher Constantin Guys: Painter of Modern Life. Michel Lévy paid the poet a lump sum of two thousand francs for all copyrights to complete the five-volume issue of the works of E.A.Poe.
1864	The poet departs for Brussels on 24 April. Failed lecture cycle in May, on the works of Delacroix, the poems of Gaulier and on the effects of drugs. In June, a new and this time utterly unsuccessful attempt at organising lectures. Meanwhile, in Paris his translation of Poe's essay Eureka is published as the fourth volume of the works of the American poet.
1865	With regards to health and finances, Baudelaire's situation in Belgium is beyond desperation and - according to Poulet-Malassis - his work disability is crippling. In July he spends two-weeks in Paris and at the Honfleur with his mother, who gives him two thousand francs at his disposal, in order to pay out at least a part of his debts at Auguste Poulet-Malassis, who - besides the wife of Victor Hugo, whom he visits in Brussels - is (according to the text of a well-known dedication) the only being, whose smile calmed his Belgian sorrow. Michel Lévy publishes Grotesque and Serious Stories, the last book of Baudelaire's translations of Poe's collected writings.
1866	- In March, accompanied by Poulet-Malassis, Charles Baudelaire visits the sketcher and engraver Félicien Rops in Namur as in the previous year. When touring the Church of St. Loup, suffering from serious bouts of dizziness, he collapses. A brain stroke follows almost immediately, resulting in the paralysis of the right side of his body and a quickly progressing loss of speech - aphasia, which accompanies him until the end of his life. The last book, which was still released during his lifetime, The Wrecks, (Les Epaves), is issued as an exclusive edition in two hundred and sixty copies. On 2 June 1866, after almost two months in the general hospital of St. John's and St' Elizabeth's in Brussels and following a temporary stay in a hotel for several weeks, his mother takes the poet to Paris. On 4 July 1866 he is treated at the clinic of Emil Dumas in Chaillot. The Ministry of Education accepts part of the expenses for his hospitalization - upon the request of his group of literary friends, including Banville, Leconte de Lisle, Saint-Beauve and Mérimé.
1867	Charles Baudelaire dies on 31 August 1867 at the eleventh hour: he is buried on 2 September in the Montparnasse cemetery. His friends, Théodor de Banville and Charles Asselineau, speak over his grave. Publisher Michel Lévy, who already owned all copyrights to Baudelaire's translations of Poe's works, also purchases the rights to all original works of the poet at a public auction. In 1868 to 1870 he publishes the collection of volumes for the first time.