THE CORVO CULT by Robert Scoble

Frederick Rolfe, the self-styled (for a time) "Baron Corvo," lived from 1860 to 1913 and published a  handful of unusual books that did not sell well but which found some fervid devotees. Aspects of his life and experiences frequently tower over his literary work. And over the years there have been three full-length biographies concentrating more on the man than on his writings--the first being A.J.A. Symons's The Quest for Corvo (1934), an "experiment in biography" (as its subtitle states) which is more a detective-story quest for information than a straightforward biography.  This first biography was followed by Donald Weeks's Corvo: Saint or Madman? (1971) and Miriam J. Benkovitz's Frederick Rolfe: Baron Corvo (1977). Last year, Strange Attractor Press published Robert Scoble's Raven: The Turbulent World of Baron Corvo (2013), which is not a full biography but a collection of fifteen essays on various aspects of Corvo's life.

Now, also from Strange Attractor Press, comes Robert Scoble's The Corvo Cult: The History of an Obsession (2014), which tells the story of Rolfe and his followers from the very beginning to the present. A wonderful volume that fills in the blanks and backgrounds of the earliest Corvines to those of the present day. These people include Hugh Benson, the publishers John Lane and Grant Richards, all three biographers, as well as significant associates such as publisher and bibliographer Cecil Woolf, Brocard Sewell, and many others.  It wouldn't have occurred to me beforehand that this was a book we need, but very quickly after I started reading it I realized how wonderfully it pulls together all the threads of previous interest in Corvo, and puts them in a fascinating context.  I'd call it a thoroughly brilliant book, save for some serious missteps at the beginning of the final chapter, "The Anatomy of a Cult," which attempts to generalize about literary cults and reputations. (Scoble is excellent with details, but not with erratically defined generalizations.)

Basically this book is the history of a small elite literary fandom. I expect we'll see more books like this in the future.