This book is the first fully comprehensive study of Baudelaire's actions, reactions, and writings from the Revolution of February 1848 to the Bonapartist coup d'état of December 1851. From the biographical, textual, and contextual evidence presented, a picture emerges of Baudelaire as a consistent radical republican. A book which traces in detail the links between literary texts and socio-political contexts, Baudelaire and the Second Revolution will appeal to students and scholars of Baudelaire and of mid-nineteenth-century French politics and society.