Synopses & Reviews
One day in 1925 a friend asked A. J. A. Symons if he had read Fr. Rolfe's "Hadrian the Seventh." He hadn't, but soon did, and found himself entranced by the novel — "a masterpiece"-- and no less fascinated by the mysterious person of its all-but-forgotten creator. "The Quest for Corvo" is a hilarious and heartbreaking portrait of the strange Frederick Rolfe, self-appointed Baron Corvo, an artist, writer, and frustrated aspirant to the priesthood with a bottomless talent for self-destruction. But this singular work, subtitled "an experiment in biography," is also a remarkable self-portrait, a study of the obsession and sympathy that inspires the biographer's art.
Book News Annotation:
This biography of an earlier biographer was written in 1934 by A.J.A.
Symons with the goal that it should be as compelling as a detective
story. In it Symons tells of his own unearthing of the documents of
his very odd subject, Fr. Rolfe (in her introduction, A.S. Byatt
quotes Freud's diagnosis of repetition compulsion as a description of
Rolfe), his tracking down of betrayed friends and collaborators, and
his collusion with other interested parties before he settles in to
exploring the lurid details of Rolfe's life as the self-styled "Baron
Corvo".
Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Synopsis:
This biography of an earlier biographer was written in 1934 by A.J.A. Symons with the goal that it should be as compelling as a detective story. In it Symons tells of his own unearthing of the documents of his very odd subject, Fr. Rolfe (in her introduction, A.S. Byatt quotes Freud's diagnosis of r
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