Baron Corvo Pseud (5 results)

Soft cover. Condition: Fine. Reprint. "A work of genius- demonic, driven - Hadrian the Seventh explores with compulsive fascination what might happen if an obscure writer, a failed priest, were sudden;y to be elected Pope of the Holy Catholic Church" Clean crisp copy. Book.

Condition: Near Fine/no dj. 246pp. 1st American edition.

8vo., First Edition; red cloth, gilt back, a fine copy. EDITION LIMITED TO 350 COPIES.

First Edition. Octavo, pp., xxii, 298, [2], 16 publisher's ads. Bound in publisher's original deep violet cloth, upper board blind stamped with Egyptian design with gilt titles, gilt fillets to spine tips, gilt spine titles. Cloth very lightly soiled and ever so slightly rubbed to corners, top-edge dusty. Contents firm and tight and clean save a small, neat, ink reference to rear paste-down. A very good copy. Superb piece of Edwardian Weird Fiction with strong homoerotic overtones in which the protagonist performs Kemetic rituals to travel to the world of classic myth, embodying Odysseus and King Balthazar of Arabia. Although The Weird of the Wanderer predates the publication of Joyce's Ulysses by 6 years, scholar's have drawn comparisons between the protagonists Nicholas Crabbe and Stephen Dedalus. The work's eccentric author, Frederick William Rolfe (1860 -1913) was a queer Roman Catholic priest, artist, photographer and writer, and whilst he was greatly overlooked in his lifetime he has since come to be regarded as one of the strangest and original authors of the era. Published by occult booksellers William Rider and Sons, who were responsible for the Rider Waite tarot deck, with 12 pages of publisher's ads for esoteric books.…

First U.K. Edition. Octavo. 19cm. Publisher's deep blue embossed cloth titled in gilt to spine and front board. 299pp. + [16pp] publisher's ads to rear. Minor scuffing and bumping to spine ends and corners, a little discoloration of the cloth in places, very slight lean; internally clean with some marginal foxing to the prelims and page edges. A very good, strong copy. A bizarre and often rather unwieldy time travel romp involving the discover of a modern revolver and a handful of sovereigns in an ancient Armenian tomb during an archaeological dig. It transpires that the tomb of the Biblical King Balthazar contains papyri suggesting that he was a time travelling student of the occult who also summoned a number of Egyptian gods, witnessed the birth of Christ and took part in the Trojan War, oh and he also rescues Helen of Troy from Hades and then marries her. One can only assume that those early 20th century British chaps were made of sterner stuff. A typically eccentric piece of rompery from Frederick Rolfe (who laid claim to writing 95% of it, with Pirie-Gordon adding flavor), who never saw a convention, literary or otherwise, that he didn't want to overturn.…