Russell Conrad is young, good-looking, charming, and able. He has a good job and even better prospects in a big New York advertising agency. He is apparently a man much to be envied. But there is a flaw.
Conrad's love for his unsuspecting wife, Madeleine, is deep and lasting. Yet it is powerless to prevent him embarking on a series of affairs - with Suzy, the young model, with Clare, the dissatisfied wife of an office superior, and at the end with the secretary of his new employer. He has an intellectual awareness of his weakness and treachery in relation to women, but though in his calmer moments he despises himself, he yet continues on a course which he knows must finally wreck his marriage and his career.
Kauffmann tells his story of a modern rake's progress with sympathy and great skill. In 1954 The Philanderer was the subject of a prosecution at the Old Bailey on a charge of obscene libel. The publishers were acquitted. Mr Justice Stable's summing-up is included in this edition.