Frederick Rolfe: Baron Corvo

Description

The volume of books written about Frederick Rolfe, AKA Baron Corvo, nearly outnumber the quantity of tomes he produced himself. This is one of the lesser known biographies, published in 1977 by Miriam J. Benkovitz, though is probably the most authoritative, pulling no punches when it comes to the later years in Rolfe’s life, when he let it all hang out, quite literally, in Venice, conducting a series of affairs with various young gondoliers. His earlier life and literary work had been dedicated to the Catholic Church, with whom he fell out of favour when ejected from a Roman seminary still defiantly seated on his mattress. That dozens of further investigations into the life of this literary curio were subsequently published, as well as his own novel Hadrian VII and his scandalous memoir The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole, is testament to our ongoing fascination with his life. This is the first edition in very good condition.