A handsome young publisher who spent weeks each year in Monte Carlo casinos. A Catholic monsignor who told fireside ghost stories to undergraduates. A shabbily-dressed bookseller who lived in a garden hovel. A group of university librarians who specialised in arcane literature and erotica. A biographer who spent lavishly the subscriptions of his fellow club members. A collector whose single- mindedness finally overwhelmed him. What all these men had in common was an unshakeable obsession with the life and work of the English writer Frederick Rolfe, or 'Baron Corvo'.
The trajectory of his turbulent life was breathtaking, his range of experience vast. In this evocative book, the first biographical over view of Corvo's world in almost 40 years, noted Corvo scholar Robert Scoble examines the writer's character and motivations. Scoble has drawn on his three decades of research in hitherto undisturbed library archives and troves of family letters to produce these essays in microhistory. He shows how these lives intersected in the story of a great eccentric who assumed the bogus title Baron Corvo and spent his final years scandalising Venice.
This is a description of Venice at the time when it served as an asylum for undesirables from all over Europe, as well as erotic vacation destinations for some, in much the same way Thailand and similar countries are today. It stands as a scurrilous sensual testament to his fervent affection for the physical beauty of the city of Venice. It was first published posthumously in 1934 in a heavily edited version and finally, in an unexpurgated edition by Quartet in 1993. This is the first annotated edition with details of the people libelled in the book.
'What had happened to the lost manuscripts, what train of chances took Rolfe to his death in Venice? The Quest continued' One summer afternoon A.J.A. Symons is handed a peculiar, eccentric novel that he cannot forget and, captivated by this unknown masterpiece, determines to learn everything he can about its mysterious author. The object of his search is Frederick Rolfe, self-titled Baron Corvo - artist, rejected candidate for priesthood and author of serially autobiographical fictions - and its story is told in this 'experiment in biography': a beguiling portrait of an insoluble tangle of talents, frustrated ambitions and self-destruction.
Get a taste of the real Vietnam and its people on a sometimes funny, always fascinating journey from the bustling cities to the out of the way villages, into Buddhist monasteries and along the Mekong - a real delight for armchair travellers and those contemplating their own adventure.
Heather’s curiosity in Wicca brings new confidence and reassurance, but alienates her from others. Even so, this enchanting path seems harmless, even helpful. But when terrifying things begin to happen that Heather can’t explain, it becomes clear that she has less control over her world than ever before. The eleventh book in the TrueColors teen fiction series, this book discusses spiritual warfare, tragedy, anger, and more.
The secind installment of the acclaimed new anthology series. Includes 24 articles exploring the outer edges of anthropology, psychology, magick, literature, art, history, science and religion. This journal has become a true product of London's undergound and this new edition opens the gates to a parallel sultural universe that few knew existed a little further.
In Literature and the Politics of Post-Victorian Decadence, Kristin Mahoney argues that the early twentieth century was a period in which the specters of the fin de siècle exercised a remarkable draw on the modern cultural imagination and troubled emergent avant-gardistes. These authors and artists refused to assimilate to the aesthetic and political ethos of the era, representing themselves instead as time travelers from the previous century for whom twentieth-century modernity was both baffling and disappointing. However, they did not turn entirely from the modern moment, but rather relied on decadent strategies to participate in conversations concerning the most highly-vexed issues of the period including war, the rise of the Labour Party, the question of women's sexual freedom, and changing conceptions of sexual and gender identities.
“We can begin with a kiss, though this will not turn out to be a love story, at least not a love story of anything like the usual kind.” So begins A Very Queer Family Indeed, which introduces us to the extraordinary Benson family. Edward White Benson became Archbishop of Canterbury at the height of Queen Victoria’s reign, while his wife, Mary, was renowned for her wit and charm—the prime minister once wondered whether she was “the cleverest woman in England or in Europe.” The couple’s six precocious children included E. F. Benson, celebrated creator of the Mapp and Lucia novels, and Margaret Benson, the first published female Egyptologist. What interests Simon Goldhill most, however, is what went on behind the scenes, which was even more unusual than anyone could imagine. Inveterate writers, the Benson family spun out novels, essays, and thousands of letters that open stunning new perspectives—including what it might mean for an adult to kiss and propose marriage to a twelve-year-old girl, how religion in a family could support or destroy relationships, or how the death of a child could be celebrated. No other family has left such detailed records about their most intimate moments, and in these remarkable accounts, we see how family life and a family’s understanding of itself took shape during a time when psychoanalysis, scientific and historical challenges to religion, and new ways of thinking about society were developing. This is the story of the Bensons, but it is also more than that—it is the story of how society transitioned from the high Victorian period into modernity.
