A.J.A. Symons’s life is changed forever when his friend Millard, a dealer in rare books, lends him an old tome and a stack of manuscript letters. The book is Hadrian the Seventh (1904), the work of one “Fr. Rolfe”; it is a brilliant and bizarre fantasy, in which a downtrodden English writer is one day unexpectedly elected Pope. The letters tell of the final days of Rolfe (alias Baron Corvo) in Venice – penniless, homeless, and starving – and set out in lurid detail the depths of his sexual depravity. Compelled to learn more about Rolfe and understand how a man who could write a masterpiece like Hadrian the Seventh could wind up dying in squalor in Italy, Symons sets out on his ‘Quest for Corvo’, tracing Rolfe’s family, friends, and enemies, and piecing together from their accounts the life of this enigmatic genius. What emerges is a thrilling page-turner, as compelling and mysterious as a detective novel, and as we follow Symons’s quest and discover the often funny, often heartbreaking facts of the life of the eccentric Baron, we make the acquaintance of not one, but two fascinating men: Rolfe and his biographer.

Subtitled ‘an experiment in biography’, Symons’s book remains one of the greatest biographies ever written and an enduring work of twentieth-century English literature. This first-ever digital edition makes Symons’s finest work available to a new generation of readers and joins several of Corvo’s works, also available from Valancourt Books.