The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography

by Symons, A. J. A.; Dawidoff, Nicholas

• ISBN13: 9780880014830
• ISBN10: 0880014830
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-07-01
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. ix
Prefatory Note	p. xvii
The Problem	p. 3
The Clues	p. 18
The Newspaper Attack	p. 31
The Reluctant Brother	p. 43
The Theological Student	p. 54
The Rejected Priest	p. 71
The Nowt of Holywell	p. 80
The Strange Historian	p. 105
The Chronicles	p. 122
The Divine Friend	p. 132
The Queer Collaborator	p. 145
Interregnum	p. 163
The Happy Interval	p. 175
Robert Hugh Benson	p. 189
The Voluntary Exile	p. 204
The Venetian Outcast	p. 217
The Final Benefactor	p. 234
Epitaph	p. 247
The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole	p. 255
The End of the Quest	p. 266
Index	p. 283
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