Presents an account of the friendship that blossomed between a writer and his subject. This book attempts to capture the spirit of a man who embodied the spirit of an age. Condemned by posterity as a lecher and a drunk, this is a man who spent his short life in various states of dissipation, on a fruitless search for amusement and diversion.

And by tracing the friendship between the writer and his subject Sisman provides a fascinating, detailed and richly textured account of the writing of one of the masterpieces of literature in the English canon.