Description
Book Synopsis''What had happened to the lost manuscripts, what train of chances took Rolfe to his death in Venice? The Quest continued''
One summer afternoon A.J.A. Symons is handed a peculiar, eccentric novel that he cannot forget and, captivated by this unknown masterpiece, determines to learn everything he can about its mysterious author. The object of his search is Frederick Rolfe, self-titled Baron Corvo - artist, rejected candidate for priesthood and author of serially autobiographical fictions - and its story is told in this ''experiment in biography'': a beguiling portrait of an insoluble tangle of talents, frustrated ambitions and self-destruction.
Trade ReviewPart detective story, part spiritual journey, and part meditation on biography. Steeped in arcane learning, queer encounters, and fanciful symbolist prose, it is a very peculiar operation indeed, leaving he reader unconvinced that there was ever such a real person as Frederick Rolfe - or, possibly, his biographer -- Hermione Lee
A slender book, an odd book, a completely original book ... a masterpiece * Wall Street Journal *
One of the genre's most notable - if also quirkiest - triumphs * New Criterion *
Extraordinary ... a new template for twentieth-century biography * Times Literary Supplement *
