Tristram Fane Saunders lives in London and works as a journalist. The Rake lives in lavish squalor and has never worked in his life. Laura lives nowhere – she's dead, for now – but she is working on a way to solve that problem.

These sly, untrustworthy poems tell the story of a nameless, ageless dandy – his slow decline, and his well-deserved fall. Take a ride in the Rake's carriage, but keep an eye on your purse.