Frederick William Serafino Austin Lewis Mary Rolfe (Baron Corvo), born in Cheapside, London, projected almost as many personae as he had names. In Hadrian the Seventh (1904) George Arthur Rose, first rejected for the priesthood and later elevated to Pope, asserts: "my pseudonimity has been misunderstood by the stupid.... That a man should split his [personality] into four or more, and should develop each separately and perfectly, was so abnormal that many normals failed to understand it." None of his personae was to achieve the recognition Rolfe felt he deserved except for Rose, and then only in Hadrian the Seventh and only to be recognized by a few readers.

The literary career of "Fr. Rolfe," as he insisted his name should appear on his books, began in earnest when he was thirty-eight with the publication of Stories Toto Told Me (1898) in the Yellow Book , an appropriate beginning for one...