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  • Published: 15 September 2006
  • ISBN: 9780940322615
  • Imprint: NY Review Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 312
  • RRP: $45.00

The Quest for Corvo

An Experiment in Biography




Part biography, part detective story: the extraordinary life of the eccentric writer Frederick Baron Corvo

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.

  • Published: 15 September 2006
  • ISBN: 9780940322615
  • Imprint: NY Review Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 312
  • RRP: $45.00