Edgar Allan Poe's work is always being rediscovered, but perhaps his most enthusiastic champion was another poet—Charles Baudelaire. The major critical works that brought this "singular genius" to an appreciative European audience were essays written by Baudelaire as introductions to his translations of Poe's fiction and poetry, essays largely unknown in North America. "Fatal Destinies" includes new translations by Joan Fiedler Mele of an essay first published in the "Revue de Paris" in 1852, the critical introductions to the 1856 and 1857 French editions of Poe's work, and four shorter pieces written between 1848 and 1865.