The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography

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.

• Author
• A.J.A. Symons, A.S. Byatt

• Format
• paperback

• Pages
• 312

• Publisher
• NYRB Classics

• Language
• english

• ISBN
• 9780940322615

• Genres
• biography, classics, gay, literature, italy, queer

• Release date
• 2001