Frederick Rolfe / Baron Corvo

'Hadrian the Seventh' (also known as "Hadrian VII") is probably the best-known work of the English novelist Frederick Rolfe, who wrote as 'Baron Corvo'.Frederick William Rolfe, alias Baron Corvo, was one of the more freakishly talented eccentrics of English letters. A homosexual, a paranoiac, a scoundrel, a petty blackmailer and a fake, he was constantly in debt, sponged on his friends, excoriated his enemies and died in 1913 in self-imposed exile in Venice. At 26 he converted to Roman Catholicism and trained for the priesthood. Twice dismissed from seminaries, he retained a lifelong conviction of his priestly vocation.
A wine merchant of prose—witty, luxuriant, Latinate—Rolfe poured out a minor masterpiece of wish fulfillment in his novel Hadrian VII, an account of how a once-rejected candidate for the priesthood was astonishingly elected Pope out of a clear blue Roman sky. Now Hadrian has been skillfully dramatized by Peter Luke, who also relies on A.J.A. Symons' biography of Rolfe, The Quest for Corvo. The result is an effulgent theatrical success in a wan London dramatic season.