Frederick Rolfe: Man

Frederick Rolfe was British writer, photographer and historian. Explore interesting quotes on man.

Frederick Rolfe: 24 quotes0 likes

“He was a confidence-man, pauper, tutor, blackmailer, paedophile, translator – and author of seven novels and a number of short stories. Rolfe was a trickster whose failed life stank to himself as to the few friends whom he had and betrayed. But he was a fascinating figure: a bore, but also a pseudo-Borgian freak whose vindictiveness and paranoia have deservedly become legendary.”

Frederick Rolfe

Martin Seymour-Smith Guide to Modern World Literature (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975) vol. 1, pp. 302-3.
Criticism

“I have…read it with a good deal of amusement and enjoyment. The latter is due, I suppose, entirely to the subject – for everyone likes to imagine what a man could do if he were a dictator or Pope, or Caliph; the amusement is mainly at the author's expence. The style is one of the most preposterous I have ever read, and I doubt if I ever saw so much pedantry combined with so much ignorance.”

Frederick Rolfe

C. S. Lewis, letter to Arthur Greeves dated October 1, 1934, cited from W. H. Lewis (ed.) The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004) vol. 2, p. 143
Criticism

“Most people have only half developed their single personalities. That a man should split his into four and more; and should develop each separately and perfectly, was so abnormal that many normals failed to understand it.”

Frederick Rolfe book Hadrian the Seventh

Source: Hadrian the Seventh (1904), Ch. 22, p. 343