HADRIAN THE SEVENTH A ROMANCE

Hadrian the Seventh: A Romance (sometimes called Hadrian VII) is a 1904 novel by the English novelist Frederick Rolfe, who wrote under the pseudonym "Baron Corvo". Rolfes best-known work, this novel of extreme wish-fulfilment developed out of an article he wrote on the Papal Conclave to elect the successor to Pope Leo XIII. The prologue introduces us to George Arthur Rose (a transparent double for Rolfe himself): a failed candidate for the priesthood denied his vocation by the machinations and bungling of the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical machinery, and now living alone with his yellow cat.