FREDERICK ROLFE
ISBN: 978-93-94223-81-3

First published in 1904, this novel is an enduring literary curiosity. The author was a half-crazy Englishman who entered preparation for the Catholic priesthood and was twice rejected for his eccentricities and misdemeanours. While remaining a Catholic, Rolfe cursed the Church and avenged himself in fantasy by writing Hadrian the Seventh. Like his creator, the novel’s hero George Arthur Rose is an Englishman who has been denied admittance to the priesthood; but when a deadlock is reached in the election of a Pope, a fantastic fluke causes Rose to be selected. As Pope, he sweepingly reforms the Church; cripples the Jesuit Order; brings about the liquidation of revolutionary France and revolutionary Russia; settles the world’s destinies at an international conference.