The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography

By A.J.A. Symons

Book Overview

The Quest For Corvo: An Experiment In Biography by A.J.A. Symons is a unique and unconventional biography that explores the life of the eccentric writer Frederick Rolfe, who wrote under the pseudonym... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0880014830
• ISBN13: 9780880014830
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Ecco Pr
• Length: 293 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 1.0" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

A Model

I read this book many years ago and it was fascinating because of its portrait of a seriously weird man. The man who called himself Baron Corvo was one of the strangest members of the British company of eccentrics. At the time I read it, I was of an impressionable age, so I was not sure that I would be as impressed by it upon re-reading it. It is still an engrossing "experiment in biography" but it is much more than that. I felt at the time of first reading that the prose was the best model for a writer that I had ever read. The prose is is not florid or ornamental. It is almost transparent. When reading it, you do not notice the prose. It is almost as if the story it relates goes directly into your mind without any intermediary. Outstanding writing!

Biography and Eccentricity

One summer afternoon in 1925, A. J. A. Symons and Christopher Millard, each somewhat obscure and eccentric literary figures in their own right, were sitting in a garden discussing books and authors that had never received proper recognition from the arbiters of literary history. Millard asked Symons whether he had ever read "Hadrian the Seventh." Symons acknowledged that he had not and that he was unfamiliar with the book. "To my surprise, [Millard] offered to lend me his copy-to my surprise, for my companion lent his books seldom and reluctantly. But knowing the range of his knowledge of out-of-the-way literature, I accepted without hesitating; and by doing so took the first step on a trail that led into very strange places."Very strange places indeed! Symons began reading "Hadrian the Seventh," a book written by Frederick Rolfe, also known as Baron Corvo, and originally published in 1904, and quickly felt "that interior stir with which we all recognize a transforming new experience." Symons went on to spend the next eight years of his life tracking down the details of the life and writings of Baron Corvo, one of the most eccentric, original and enigmatic English writers of the last one hundred years. The result was "The Quest for Corvo: An Experimental Biography," a fascinating book that has been in- and out-of-print since its first publication in 1934 and has enjoyed a literary cult following akin to that of the text ("Hadrian the Seventh") and the author (Rolfe, aka Corvo) that originally inspired it. As one reads "The Quest for Corvo," it seems that Symon's text represents the outermost of three concentric circles of eccentricity. The innermost, core circle is "Hadrian the Seventh," a strange and imaginative novel that tells the story of an impoverished, eccentric and seemingly paranoid writer and devotee of the Roman Catholic faith, George Arthur Rose. Rose, a brilliant, self-taught man whose candidacy for the priesthood had been rejected twenty years earlier, is unexpectedly approached one day by a Cardinal and a Bishop who have been made aware of his devotion and his shameful treatment by the Church. Rose is ordained and ultimately becomes the first English Pope in several hundred years. While a work of fiction, Symons' biographical investigations disclose that much of the story of "Hadrian the Seventh" closely parallels the life of its strange author, Frederick Rolfe. The second circle of eccentricity is, of course, the life of Frederick Rolfe, Baron Corvo, himself. It is the telling of this life that occupies Symons in "The Quest for Corvo," and the result is a fascinating, if perhaps not always historically accurate, detective story cum biography. Starting with his obsessive search for information on Rolfe and his meetings and correspondence with those who knew him, Symons brilliantly recreates a life-the life of a strangely talented artist, photographer, historian, and writer who led a life of seemingly paranoid desperation, ultimatel

A thoughtful modernist meditation on biography

In recent years we've been treated to many thoughtful and highly readable studies on the nature of biography itself, such as in Richard Holmes's FOOTSTEPS and Janet Malcolm's THE SILENT WOMAN. Symons's THE QUEST FOR CORVO could almost be a sketch for these later, deeper studies in its very metatextual approach to what it means to compose a biography of Frederick Rolfe, one of the strangest figures in fin-de-siecle British letters. Although later biographies took this work to task for its errors and omissions, that shouldn't dissuade you from enjoying how Symons juxtaposes differing perspectives on the quarrelsome and paranoid Rolfe's actions and behaviors, and his desire to get at the "real man." Greater drawbacks, I think, might be Symons's homophobia--which, while very common for its time, seems a bit hysterical today--and the fact that Rolfe (or "Baron Corvo," as he liked to style himself) as a person either enchants readers completely or eventually becomes as tiresome to them as he did to his contemporaries. Still, even though Rolfe's antics do grate on some people's nerves a bit after a while(as they did mine), the fascination of his personality remains quite compelling.This edition features a beautiful cover and paper stock (as do all NYRB editions) and an intelligent and thoughtful introduction (which, unfortunately, they do not always).

The book is a dazzling account of a truly bizzare figure.

This is a fascinating look into the mind and world of a gifted but hopelessly selfish personality. The less you know about Corvo/Rolfe, the more you will enjoy Symons' eccentric telling. Symons' intriguing approach to biography takes the reader through each step of his inquiry. Figures from Corvo/Rolfe's shadowy past emerge to convey their various reminiscinces "Rashoman"- style. The reader shares Symons' fluctuating sense of pity and revulsion as he traces his subject's descent into Hell. Symons' writing is colorful and witty, capturing beautifully the literary spirit of Edwardian England. Unfortunately, once hooked, the reader will be unable to further satisfy his or her thirst for Corvo, as his books are hard to come by. This should in no way deter would-be readers from experiencing and enjoying Symons'Quest.