Nicholas Crabbe
Frederick Rolfe
Nicholas Crabbe - or The One and the Many
Norfolk, CT.: New Directions, 1958.
First printing.
A half-fictional history of the self-styled Baron Corvo's early literary struggles.
The real-life portraits, drawn with Rolfe's usual brushful of acid, caused threats of libel action soon after its writing around 1905, and no publisher dared issue it; indeed, it was long thought lost.
However, when most of the models for its thinly-disguised characters were no longer alive to file suit, two typescripts turned up, one at the Harvard Library and the other in the Walpole Collection at the Bodleian at Oxford.
With an introduction by Cecil Woolf, who identifies many of the characters involved.
Jacket has chip to upper corner, otherwise an excellent copy of a rather unusual book.
Hardcover.