Story-Portal

English literature is full of bizarre figures, but few led a more extraordinary life than Frederick William Rolfe, the self-styled Baron Corvo who scandalised society around the turn of the century. Failed schoolmaster, painter, and photographer, he was nevertheless a literary genius. He was also his own worst enemy. His paranoia an an unremitting conviction of his own merit brought him a deluge of disasters, and left him literally destitute for much of his adult life. He eventually died penniless and unknown in Venice in 1913. From this unhappy life, however, he managed to produce some highly original and erudite books, most notably Hadrian the Seventh and Stories Toto Told Me. They were virtually ignored during Rolfe's lifetime, but since his death they have become established as modern masterpieces. Almost immediately after his death a cult began to develop around his life and work, particularly after A.J.A. Symons published his seminal biography The Quest for Corvo in 1934. Symons did a masterly job in promoting Rolfe's works and getting much of his unpublished work into print. 

Frederick Rolfe, who early in his career also published under the name "Baron Corvo," became famous for his Hadrian the Seventh (1904), in which an Englishman is unexpectedly elected Pope, and later became infamous for his writings on his love for Venetian boys. But it was with the "Toto" stories, first published in John Lane's fin de siècle literary journal The Yellow Book, that Corvo achieved his first and most widespread authorial success. In these tales, an Italian peasant youth ingenuously recounts to his English master six poignant and often funny stories dealing with Heaven, saints, morality, and religion. First published in volume form in 1898 and long out of print, Stories Toto Told Me remains one of the most remarkable achievements of one of the strangest and most talented of English writers.