Frederick William Rolfe, better known as Baron Corvo and also calling himself 'Frederick William Serafino Austin Lewis Mary Rolfe' (1860 - 1913), was an English writer, artist, photographer and eccentric. Rolfe spent most of his life as a freelance writer, mainly in England but eventually in Venice. He lived in the era before the welfare state and relied on benefactors for support. But he had an argumentative nature and had a tendency to fall out spectacularly with most of the people who tried to help him and offer him room and board. Eventually, out of money and out of luck, he died in Venice from a stroke on 25 October 1913. He was buried on the Isola di San Michele, Venice. Rolfe's life provided the basis for The Quest for Corvo by A.J.A. Symons, an "experiment in biography" regarded as a minor classic in the field. This same work reveals that Rolfe had an unlikely enthusiast in the person of Maundy Gregory.
