Synopsis
One day George Arthur Rose, hack writer and minor priest, discovers that he has been picked to be Pope. He is hardly surprised and not in the least daunted. "The previous English pontiff was Hadrian the Fourth," he declares. "The present English pontiff is Hadrian the Seventh. It pleases Us; and so, by Our own impulse, We command."Hadrian is conceived in the image of his creator, Fr. Rolfe, whose aristocratic pretensions (he called himself Baron Corvo), religious obsession, and anarchic and self-aggrandizing sensibility have made him known as one of the great English eccentrics. Fr. Rolfe endured a lifetime of indignities and disappointments. However, in the hilarious and touching pages of this, his finest novel, he triumphs.
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Review
It is extraordinarily alive, even though it has been buried for twenty years. Up it rises to confront us...Only a first-rate book escapes its date...The book remains a clear and definite book of our epoch, not to be swept aside.
-- D.H. Lawrence
-- Saturday Review
About the Author
Fr. Rolfe (1860-1913) also known as Frederick Rolfe and Baron Corvo, converted to Catholicism when he was twenty-six and attempted to enter the priesthood. After he was ejected from the seminary, he pledged himself to twenty years of celibacy and proceeded to write several semi-autobiographical novels that were simultaneously pious and irreverent. He lived alternately extravagantly and in squalor, depending on his means at the time, and died bitter and poor in Venice.
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Hadrian the Seventh
Seller: St Philip's Books, P.B.F.A., B.A., Oxford, United Kingdom
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Binding sound, text unmarked. Condition: Very Good+. Dust Jacket Condition: No dustwrapper. Robust packaging. Tracking is always added to USA orders. It can be added to other overseas orders on request. Used books are exempt from USA tariffs. No ownership marks. Binding sound, text unmarked. Size: 413pp. No ownership marks. Seller Inventory # YY7572