An Ossuary of the North Lagoon

Frederick William Rolfe, better known as Baron Corvo and also calling himself 'Frederick William Serafino Austin Lewis Mary Rolfe' (1860 - 1913), was an English writer, artist, photographer and eccentric. Rolfe spent most of his life as a freelance writer, mainly in England but eventually in Venice. He lived in the era before the welfare state and relied on benefactors for support. But he had an argumentative nature and had a tendency to fall out spectacularly with most of the people who tried to help him and offer him room and board. Eventually, out of money and out of luck, he died in Venice from a stroke on 25 October 1913. He was buried on the Isola di San Michele, Venice. Rolfe's life provided the basis for The Quest for Corvo by A.J.A. Symons, an "experiment in biography" regarded as a minor classic in the field. This same work reveals that Rolfe had an unlikely enthusiast in the person of Maundy Gregory.

Frederick Rolfe, a.k.a. Baron ­Corvo, though best known for his novel Hadrian the Seventh and his eccentric personality, was also a master of the short story, which found expression in odd pseudo-biographical pieces and unique fictions that expressed his own unique sense of style. The present ­collection contains seven of Rolfe's best short prose works: three Venetian narratives written toward the end of his life, two tales featuring the Princess of Cinthyanum, and two other peculiar tales, the first of which, 'The Tattooed Wedding Ring,' must certainly be seen as an early example of experimental fiction. Previously confined to hard-to-find limited editions, these stories are here available for the first time to a broader public.