The Quest For Corvo: An Experiment In Biography - Hardcover

Symons, A J A

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1258082381 ISBN 13: 9781258082383

Publisher: Literary Licensing, LLC, 2011

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

"Symons's biography of a little-known writer named Frederick Rolfe is unique in biographical literature in bringing the reader in on how the biographer knows what he knows about his subject; and in owning up to what he doesn't know or feels cannot be known. 'The Quest for Corvo' is biography in the form of a detective story, and as such it is riveting....The surest formula for a masterpiece biography--of which there are not that many--is an extraordinary human being writing about a great one. In 'The Quest for Corvo' we have an utterly charming man writing on a madly eccentric one....A slender book, an odd book, a completely original book, [it] also represents a new method of writing biography that has never been copied." --Joseph Epstein, "The Wall Street Journal"

About the Author:

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

About this edition

• Publisher: Literary Licensing, LLC
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1258082381
• ISBN 13: 9781258082383
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 306