Né Frederick William Serafino Austin Lewis Mary Rolfe, he was born into a merchant-class London family, but he fancied himself royalty and, following a visit to Italy, titled himself Baron Corvo or, equally misleading, Fr Rolfe. Rolfe was an accomplished painter and an innovator in photography.

A Roman Catholic convert, frustrated in his desire to enter priesthood, his most oustanding novel, Hadrian the Seventh (1904), appears to be a dramatized autobiography - a self-justification and dream of wish-fulfilment, in which Rolfe's protagonist, George arthur Rose, rose from literary poverty to become pope.

His other writings include Stories Toto Told Me (1898), Chronicles of the House of Borgia (1901), and The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole: a romance of modern Venice (1934), in which Rolfe describes his own poverty, his homosexual fantasies, and the beauty of venice, as well as abusing in characteristic vein many of those who had previously befriended him, including R, H. Benson.

Rolfe's style is highly ornate and idiosyncratic, and his allusions erudite. He alienated most of his admirers by his persistent paranoia and requests for financial support. The story of his unhappy life is told by A. J. A. Symons in The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography (1934).

photograph of Tito Biondi - 1890 - Lake Nemi (Roma) - 11,5 x 16,5 cm - by Frederick Rolfe