Paul Verlaine (1844–1896) wrote three secret collections of verse, of which Femmes and Hombres remained almost unobtainable even in France until the 1970s. These strangely unrespectable poems celebrate the pleasures of sex, with women and men respectively, in loving detail – reversing the old view of Verlaine as a limp impressionist. Alistair Elliot’s metrical translations brilliantly echo the vigour, good humour and skill of the originals, which accompany them in this bilingual edition.