Rolfe, Frederick William
Rolfe, Frederick William ( 1860 – 1913 ),who liked to call himself ‘Baron Corvo’, or, equally misleadingly, Fr Rolfe , by turns schoolmaster, painter, and writer. From a Dissenting background, he was a convert to Roman Catholicism and an unsuccessful candidate for the priesthood; his most outstanding novel, Hadrian the Seventh ( 1904 ), appears to be a dramatized autobiography—a self-justification and a dream of wish-fulfilment, in which Rolfe's protagonist, George Arthur Rose , is rescued from a life of literary poverty and elected pope. His other writings include Stories Toto Told Me (published in 1898 , after first appearing in the Yellow Book ), Chronicles of the House of Borgia ( 1901 , an eccentric historical study), Don Tarquinio: A Kataleptic Phantasmatic Romance ( 1905 , a novel relating 24 hours in the life of a young nobleman in the company of the Borgias in 1495 ), and...
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