Writer, poet, historian, anti-slavery campaigner, botanist, book-collector, MP and art patron, William Roscoe has been acclaimed as 'The Founding Father of Liverpool Culture'. A friend and correspondent of Burns and Shelley, acclaimed by Horace Walpole as 'by far the best of our historians', and author of a poem 'The Butterfly's Ball' that delighted King George III so much he had it set to music, Roscoe's name is synonymous with Liverpool. In this major new study Arline Wilson explores the man behind the myth, examining why Roscoe is claimed to personify, more than any other, the union of commerce and culture in Liverpool: the lawyer, banker and businessman, who is credited with laying the foundations for his city's artistic, literary and social evolution.