Louise Colet was the mistress of Gustave Flaubert at the time of his writing Madame Bovary. She was so angered by her breakup with Flaubert, she wrote it is alleged This was the Man ( Lui) in an effort to get her own back on him Her This was the Man is a brilliant complex roman à clé that sets the impassioned affair between Alfred de Musset (Albert) and George Sand (Antonia) against her own experience of loving two men of towering but contrasting literary reputations..

The middle-aged and dissolute poet Albert de Lincel pursues Stéphanie, marquise de Rostan who, although attracted, continually rebuffs him. What is the problem? Is it Albert's notorious affair twenty years previously with the celebrated writer Antonia Black?

Set as a story within a story, the desperate Albert recounts the true tale of his stormy relationship with Antonia, hoping to set the record straight. But Stéphanie's reluctance, moved though she is, has another cause. She has given her heart to a man far away, toiling at the great novel which will make his name. For Stéphanie, this ideal trumps all. When Léonce, the absent lover, finally appears, Albert's hopes are crushed. So are Stéphanie's, for the high-minded Léonce turns out to be a vulgar monster.