Émile Nelligan’s body of work comprises some 170 poems, sonnets, rondels, songs, and prose poems, all of which were written by the age of 19. Prior to his incarceration, he had published only 23 poems. By 1904, however, thanks to the diligence of his friend Louis Dantin, and with the help of his mother, 107 poems were published in Émile Nelligan et son oeuvre with a preface by Dantin. A further three editions were published in 1925, 1932 and 1945. In 1952, Luc Lacourcière compiled a comprehensive edition of Nelligan’s poems, entitled Poésies complètes : 1869-1899, containing the 107 poems gathered by Dantin, as well as additional poems that Nelligan had written before his hospitalization, that he had been sent to friends or that were found among his papers. This edition has been reprinted several times, most recently in 1989.

Émile Nelligan was a pioneer of French-Canadian literature. In his poetry, he reached past the time-worn subjects of patriotism and fidelity to the land that had occupied so many of his literary predecessors, while instead, focusing on the symbolic possibilities of language and his own inner landscape. Although his writing was influenced by symbolist poets such as Charles-Pierre Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, and English-language writers such as Lord Byron and Edgar Allan Poe, Nelligan created a poetic sensibility that was uniquely his own. In so doing, he struck a chord of recognition with French Canada that remains to this day. His poems have been translated into English, and he is the subject of numerous colloquia, films, novels, poems, a ballet, and an opera.