Baron Corvo
Baron Corvo, the pseudonym of Frederick William Rolfe (1860-1913), was an English writer known for his unique prose style, which emphasized precision and beauty in language. Born in London, Rolfe distanced himself from his middle-class Protestant upbringing and converted to Roman Catholicism in 1886 while pursuing a tumultuous life marked by financial instability and strained relationships. His literary career began with stories inspired by Italian folklore, which garnered attention through publications like the Yellow Book.
Rolfe's most notable work, the novel *Hadrian the Seventh*, was published in 1904 and features a protagonist resembling Rolfe who experiences a dramatic rise to the papacy. The novel's blend of deep spirituality and personal grievances has captivated readers over the years. Although Rolfe's writings initially went unnoticed during his lifetime, a biography published by A. J. A. Symons in 1934 reignited interest in his life and work, leading to the posthumous release of his later novels. Rolfe's legacy has continued to inspire literary figures, including adaptations like Peter Luke's 1968 play *Hadrian VII*, reflecting his complex and eccentric life.
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Baron Corvo
English novelist and short-story writer
- Born: July 22, 1860
- Birthplace: London, England
- Died: October 25, 1913
- Place of death: Venice, Italy
Biography
Frederick William Rolfe, known by the pseudonym Baron Corvo (CAWR-voh), wrote and published in obscurity while he lived. Although he never attracted a wide readership, his prose style, with its emphasis on the exact word and the sentence beautiful in itself, later influenced such writers as Henry Harland, R. H. Benson, and Leslie Shane. Rolfe achieved some notoriety twenty-one years after his death, when A. J. A. Symons, intrigued by both the charm of Rolfe’s writing and the “eccentricity, misery, and scandal” of Rolfe’s private life, published a lively biography, The Quest for Corvo, in 1934. {$S[A]Rolfe, Frederick William;Corvo, Baron}
Born in London in 1860, the eldest son of a piano manufacturer, Rolfe left home at fifteen, rejecting his middle-class Protestant background. In 1886, he became a Roman Catholic and began his unsuccessful attempts to become a priest, meanwhile maintaining his erratic existence by painting, writing, and seeking patronage. Wherever he went, he accumulated debts and enemies, and he eventually turned on most of those who befriended and assisted him.
Rolfe was first noticed as a writer when his stories, based on Italian folk tales, were published in the Yellow Book and subsequently collected in Stories Toto Told Me and In His Own Image. His historical work, Chronicles of the House of Borgia, is a learned but biased glorification of Alexander VI; his translation of The Rubaiyat of Umar Khaiyam is personal and idiosyncratic and is chiefly of interest as it compares to the more famous version done by Edward FitzGerald.
Rolfe is best known for the novel Hadrian the Seventh, published under his own name in 1904. In it, a character strongly resembling the author is belatedly granted his wish to enter the Catholic clergy, then almost immediately is elevated to the papacy. The book’s combination of genuine piety with personal spite has fascinated readers ever since.
The success of Symons’s 1934 biography of Rolfe inspired the posthumous publication of Rolfe’s last novels, of which the best-known is The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole, in which another author surrogate finds happiness with a boyish maiden. Here, too, Rolfe uses fiction to attack thinly disguised versions of his foes and creditors. A second wave of interest in Rolfe was inspired by Peter Luke’s 1968 play Hadrian VII, based on both the novel and Rolfe’s life.
Bibliography
Benkovitz, Miriam J. Frederick Rolfe, Baron Corvo: A Biography. New York: Putnam, 1977.
Symons, A. J. A. The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography. 1934. Rev. ed. New York: New York Review of Books, 2001.
Weeks, Donald. Corvo: “Saint or Madman?” New York: McGraw Hill, 1972.
Woolf, Cecil, comp. A Bibliography of Frederick Rolfe, Baron Carvo. Rev. ed. London: Hart-Davis, 1972.
Woolf, Cecil, and Brocard Sewell. The Clerk Without a Beneficence: A Study of Fr. Rolfe, Baron Corvo’s Conversion and Vocation. Aysleford, England: St. Albert’s Press, 1964.
Woolf, Cecil, and Brocard Sewell, eds. Corvo: 1860-1960: A Collection of Essays by Various Hands to Commemorate the Centenary of the Birth of Fr. Rolfe, Baron Corvo. Aysleford, England: St. Albert’s Press, 1961.