comte de Lautréamont

Born Isidore Lucien Ducasse in Montevideo, Uruguay, he wrote under the title Comte de Lautréamont and is remembered as one of the most startling voices in French literature. He spent much of his youth in France and published Les Chants de Maldoror, the work that made his posthumous reputation, shortly before his death in Paris in 1870 at just 24 years old.

During his lifetime he was little known, but later writers and artists embraced him for his fierce imagination, unsettling imagery, and refusal to follow ordinary literary rules. His writing helped inspire Symbolist and Surrealist readers, and today he is often seen as a brilliant outsider whose small body of work had an influence far beyond its size.