Germain Nouveau (1851-1920), poet and painter, friend of Rimbaud and Verlaine, discreet disciple of Mallarmé, led a vie de bohème while composing poems of both religious and erotic inspiration. This book is both a biographical study and an introduction to the works of a long-neglected poet and undervalued precursor of French Surrealism, whose calligraphy can be found in the manuscript of Rimbaud's famous Illuminations, and to whom Breton, Aragon, and Eluard acknowledged their debt.