Extolled as refined, iridescent, and exquisitely crafted but were also attacked as decadent. Knight traces the French symbolist sources of Loeffler's highly personal compositional style and brings to life his secluded and deeply troubled life - episodes of which he worked vigorously to obscure. From Loeffler's own writings come many revealing and previously unknown anecdotes, often involving the most eminent artistic figures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth.