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Rolfe, Frederick William (Baron Corvo (pseud.); Pirie-Gordon, Harry.
The Weird of the Wanderer.
Publisher: William Rider & son, London;
Date of Publication: 1912
Stock Code: 12648
First Edition. Octavo, pp., xxii, 298, [2], 16 publisher’s ads. Bound in publisher’s original deep violet cloth, upper board blind stamped with Egyptian design with gilt titles, gilt fillets to spine tips, gilt spine titles. Cloth very lightly soiled and ever so slightly rubbed to corners, top-edge dusty. Contents firm and tight and clean save a small, neat, ink reference to rear paste-down. A very good copy. Superb piece of Edwardian Weird Fiction with strong homoerotic overtones in which the protagonist performs Kemetic rituals to travel to the world of classic myth, embodying Odysseus and King Balthazar of Arabia. Although The Weird of the Wanderer predates the publication of Joyce’s Ulysses by 6 years, scholar’s have drawn comparisons between the protagonists Nicholas Crabbe and Stephen Dedalus. The work’s eccentric author, Frederick William Rolfe (1860 -1913) was a queer Roman Catholic priest, artist, photographer and writer, and whilst he was greatly overlooked in his lifetime he has since come to be regarded as one of the strangest and original authors of the era. Published by occult booksellers William Rider and Sons, who were responsible for the Rider Waite tarot deck, with 12 pages of publisher’s ads for esoteric books.


£285.00