Among the most innovative of poets in the French language, Laforgue was an important influence on T.S. Eliot. Laforgue died in Paris in 1887, aged just 27. Peter Dale, born in Surrey, England, worked as a school teacher until 1993, when he became a freelance writer and translator. Anvil publish his own poems, as well as his translations from Jules Laforgue and Francois Villon, and of Dante's 'Divine Comedy'.