Hadrian the Seventh (New York Review Books) [Paperback]

Fr. Rolfe (Author), Alexander Theroux (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 31, 2001 | Series: New York Review Books

One day George Arthur Rose, hack writer and minor priest, discovers that he has been picked to be Pope. He is hardly surprised and not in the least daunted. "The previous English pontiff was Hadrian the Fourth," he declares. "The present English pontiff is Hadrian the Seventh. It pleases Us; and so, by Our own impulse, We command."Hadrian is conceived in the image of his creator, Fr. Rolfe, whose aristocratic pretensions (he called himself Baron Corvo), religious obsession, and anarchic and self-aggrandizing sensibility have made him known as one of the great English eccentrics. Fr. Rolfe endured a lifetime of indignities and disappointments. However, in the hilarious and touching pages of this, his finest novel, he triumphs.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Make that Pope Hadrian the Seventh. Rolfe offers up a British pontiff who wants to redesign the crucifix, redecorate the Vatican, and canonize capriciously. Hadrian is a little-disguised version of Rolfe, one of English literature's great eccentrics. This was originally published in the early 1900s.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

It is extraordinarily alive, even though it has been buried for twenty years. Up it rises to confront us…Only a first-rate book escapes its date…The book remains a clear and definite book of our epoch, not to be swept aside.
— D.H. Lawrence

Frederick Rolfe alias Baron Corvo is certainly one of the most fascinating of those various literary curiosities of England.
— Saturday Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 424 pages
• Publisher: NYRB Classics; New edition edition (March 31, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940322625
• ISBN-13: 978-0940322622
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 1 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,067,241 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Astonishingly modern themes, June 9, 2003

By 

Patrick A Daley (Fredericton, New Brunswick) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hadrian the Seventh (New York Review Books) (Paperback)

This really is an astonishingly modern book. He shows in part a Church capable of corruption and deceit, but also shows a Church which has what we now call a preferential option toward the poor, and a Pope also works diligently for peace.

Here we have the hero, a poor, scholarly eccentric, who has been ill-treated by Church officials. His bishop did not like him and did not support his vocation to the priesthood, and told lies to boot. However, finally, a couple of bishops, one an Archbishop, look into his case and decide he has been dreadfully wronged. Rolfe delineates a structure of secrecy, deceit, and cover up. He did not anticipate the scandals of the cover-up of child abuse, but the structures of deceit are there, and one can still see them at work today.

Well, the old Archbishop, after much careful and challenging questioning, determines that our hero really does have a true vocation to the priesthoood, and that his studies were sufficient. He ordains him. It just turns out that the Archbishop has come back from a Papal Conclave which is in deadlock, unable to choose a new Pope. He returns to Rome with the new priest in his entourage, and lo and behold, it turns out that his ill-treatment and his case have been discussed. By the Holy Spirit, he is chosen Pope, much to his surprise. However, the Spirit no doubt gave him strength and he accepts the office, choosing the title of Hadrian VII.

Well, what kind of Pope is he? He first of all wants to be a Pope of the people, and so ensures after his election that his first appearance is to the waiting crowds outside in the world. He likes going among the crowds, even though there is some danger of assassination, though he was not the traveler that J. P. II is. He insists on having his quarters built and decorated in a utilitarian way, eschewing grandeur. Having experienced poverty, he is very solicitous towards the poor and devotes a lot of Church resources towards ameliorating poverty. So, he anticipated the preferential option towards the poor.

Some have pointed out that his Pope has a great deal more influence in the world than any modern Pope has had, Hadrian VII showed himself as vitally interested in peace. Truly, the Pope would not be able to engineer a division of the world into spheres of influence for various favored powerful nations.

There is good and bad in the Church, and Rolfe's Hadrian VII sets out much of both.

Rolfe himself was quite an eccentric, and so is his Pope. The style is full of archaisms and wierd bits of learning, but Rolfe was theologically astute, too. His Hadrian is a very complex and facinating character, somewhat depressive, hard working, kind, and strange. This novel is so interesting I can forgive it a few faults. Some of it is a hoot.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Match Made in Heaven, April 10, 2001

By 

Steven Moore (Ann Arbor, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hadrian the Seventh (New York Review Books) (Paperback)

The most attractive feature of this new edition of Rolfe's bizarre classic is the introduction by Alexander Theroux, perhaps the only writer today with the fire, erudition, and vocubulary to carry on the tradition of Corvine invective. (If you like Corvo, you must read Theroux's novel "Darconville's Cat.")

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Had enough of E M Forster? Try Rolfe., April 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Hadrian the Seventh (Modern Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

Baron Corvo, like Ouida, is one of those once popular novelists who have been expunged from the canon. There is an H G Wells image of Queen Victoria sitting on British society like a paperweight, once she was gone a great many things started blowing around. Well, Rolfe was one of those things. The word "disturbing" is used about a great many slickly written modern novels but Rolfe's mental instability is very obvious in this book (this is not always an easy book to read). High camp (lots of kissing of rings), a none-too-well-hidden homosexual subtext, the Catholic Church: it sounds terrible but this rogue text is surprisingly enjoyable and as a sort of postmodernism avant la lettre raises intriguing "what might have been" questons about the C20th English Novel.