After having it recommended to him by friend, A.J.A. Symons read Frederick Rolfe's "Hadrian the Seventh" in 1925 and found himself entranced by the novel and by its mysterious and all-but-forgotten author. This book is a hilarious and heartbreaking portrait of the strange Frederick Rolfe, an artist, writer, and frustrated aspirant to the priesthood with a talent for self-destruction, but it is also a self-portrait, a study of the obsession and sympathy that inspires the biographer's art. "Siguiendo la recomendacion de un amigo, en 1925 A.J.A. Symons leyo "Hadrian the Seventh" y quedo anonadado por la obra y por su misterioso y practicamente olvidado autor. Este libro es un retrato graciosisimo y desgarrador del excentrico Frederick Rolfe, artista, escritor, y aspirante frustrado al seminario con un verdadero talento para la destruccion propia., pero es tambien un auto-retrato, un estudio de la obsesion y la simpatia que inspiran el arte del biografo."