Hadrian the Seventh (Annotated)

Hadrian the Seventh (1904) is Frederick Rolfe's extraordinary fantasy of ecclesiastical reversal, in which George Arthur Rose, an impoverished, rejected aspirant to the priesthood, is unexpectedly raised to the papacy as Hadrian VII. Written in a richly idiosyncratic, ornate, and often caustic prose, the novel blends theological speculation, political satire, self-dramatizing autobiography, and fi...