The Corvo Cult The History of an Obsession

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'.