Baudelaire poems fetch record price

The sale at the Drouot auction house in Paris raked in a total of more than four million euros overall, including sales charges.

An original signed copy of Charles Baudelaire's brooding romantic poems "Les Fleurs de Mal" sold for a record 775,000 euros at an auction in Paris on Tuesday.

The 1857 edition went on sale with other belongings of the 19-century poet, including letters and a dictionary that he used to translate works of American writer Edgar Allen Poe.

The price for the book, equivalent to 1.17 million dollars, was more than five times its estimated value before the sale. Another copy of the book fetched 560,000 euros in 2007, sales expert Francois Valleriaux told AFP.

A letter titled "Du suicide" (about suicide), written by Baudelaire about an attempt to take his own life in 1845, went for 225,000 euros -- a record for a letter by the poet.

The sale at the Drouot auction house in Paris raked in a total of more than four million euros overall, including sales charges.