WJean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet known for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he started writing at a very young age and excelled as a student, but abandoned his formal education in his teenage years to run away from home to Paris amidst the Franco-Prussian War. During his late adolescence and early adulthood he produced the bulk of his literary output, then completely stopped writing literature at the age of 20, after assembling his last major work, Illuminations.
WErnest Delahaye (1853–1930) was a French writer and essayist. He maintained a long and close friendship with Arthur Rimbaud with whom he first met in April 1865 when they attended school together in Charleville in the Ardennes region of France. He and Rimbaud had a shared interest in poetry, and he would help Rimbaud by making fair copies of his drafts for distribution to Rimbaud's literary friends. He was one of the few (seven) recipients of the privately printed A Season in Hell though Rimbaud later asked for it back to give it to someone else. According to Rimbaud biographer, Charles Nicholl, Rimbaud's "[last] strictly dateable poem" was contained in a letter to Delahaye of 14 October 1875. Through Rimbaud, Delahaye also met poet Paul Verlaine and became friendly with him. Verlaine wrote a poem - Sonnet Boiteux - which is dedicated to him. Delahaye mixed his civil service career, working at the Education Ministry, with writing biographical material on both Rimbaud and Verlaine, contributing first-hand accounts of the poets' lives and families. Most of Delahaye's correspondence with Rimbaud and Verlaine survives.
WGeorges Alphonse Fleury Izambard was a French school teacher, best known as the teacher and benefactor of poet Arthur Rimbaud. He taught at the Collège de Charleville in Charleville, where his nickname was "Zanzibar".
WVitalie Rimbaud was the elder of the two surviving sisters of Arthur Rimbaud.
WThe Rimbaud and Verlaine Foundation is a registered charity in the United Kingdom. It was set up in 2011 to take advantage of the gift, in a legacy, of the property at 8 Royal College Street in the London Borough of Camden, the house occupied by the French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine when they lived in London in 1873. In 2014 it was launched as a new arts organisation and a registered charity.
WIsabelle Rimbaud – born 1 June 1860 in Charleville and died 20 June 1917 in Neuilly-sur-Seine - was the youngest sister of Arthur Rimbaud and the wife of Pierre-Eugène Dufour (1855-1922), better known as Paterne Berrichon. She inherited Arthur Rimbaud's estate after his death in 1891 and became his literary executor.
WMarie Catherine Vitalie Rimbaud née Cuif, was better known simply as Vitalie Rimbaud, and was the mother of the visionary poet, Arthur Rimbaud. She was born on 10 March 1825 and died on 16 November 1907. She met Captain Frédéric Rimbaud (1814-1878), a French infantry officer, in October 1852 and married him the following February. They had five children:Nicolas Frédéric ("Frédéric"), born 2 November 1853 the poet, Jean Nicolas Arthur ("Arthur"), born 20 October 1854 Victorine Pauline Vitalie, born 4 June 1857 Jeanne Rosalie Vitalie ("Vitalie"), born 15 June 1858 Frédérique Marie Isabelle ("Isabelle"), born 1 June 1860.
WRoyal College Street is a major thoroughfare in London, England in the Borough of Camden. The street is home to the London headquarters of Parcelforce and the London campus of the Royal Veterinary College, a constituent college of the University of London.
WA Season in Hell is an extended poem in prose written and published in 1873 by French writer Arthur Rimbaud. It is the only work that was published by Rimbaud himself. The book had a considerable influence on later artists and poets, including the Surrealists.
WThe Spiritual Hunt is a prose poem purportedly written by French writer Arthur Rimbaud, claimed to be his masterpiece by his friend and lover Paul Verlaine. Supposedly strongly resembling in form the only book he published during his lifetime, A Season in Hell, the poem is considered to be one of the most famous lost artworks, despite the fact that in 1949, a twelve-page work by the same title was unveiled to the public by Pascal Pia; Rimbaud scholars, almost unanimously, have denounced this poem as a literary forgery.
WPaul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement and the Decadent movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.
W"Voyelles" or "Vowels" is a sonnet in alexandrines by Arthur Rimbaud, written in 1871 but first published in 1883. Its theme is the different characters of the vowels, which it associates with those of colours. It has become one of the most studied poems in the French language, provoking very diverse interpretations.