A
Alphonse James Albert Symons
1900 – 1941
16 works on record
Biography
British author and biographer best known for his brilliant and unconventional biography The Quest for Corvo.
Family economic difficulties obliged Symons to leave home and learn a trade at an early age. For three years he lived a life of drudgery, working as an apprentice to a furrier. His formal education was private and scanty; Symons considered himself self-educated and, as a writer, self-made. Employed as secretary and later director of the First Edition Club of London, he became a skilled bibliographer, an occupation he considered dreary and uncongenial to his personal literary and cultural aspirations.
His well-received biography H.M. Stanley (1933) was followed by his magnum opus, The Quest for Corvo, a biography of the English author and eccentric Frederick Rolfe (1860–1913), the self-styled Baron Corvo. Rolfe’s life had fascinated Symons for years—an earlier work, Frederick Baron Corvo, had been printed privately in 1927—and his approach to the subject in The Quest for Corvo, subtitled “An Experiment in Biography,” was novel in its anecdotal, fragmentary reconstruction of a life about which little factual evidence existed. The book won critical acclaim and came to be regarded as a masterpiece of modern biography.
Symons’ other works include Emin, Governor of Equatoria (1928); A Bibliography of the First Editions of Books by William Butler Yeats (1924); the Anthology of ’Nineties Verse (1928), compiled and edited by Symons; and an uncompleted biography of Oscar Wilde.
(Encyclopaedia Britannica)
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Works

Essays and biographies
1969

The Quest for Corvo
1934

H. M. Stanley
1933
A.J.A. Symons to Wyndham Lewis
A.J.A. Symons to Wyndham Lewis
1982
Emin, governor ofEquatoria
Emin, governor ofEquatoria
1950
The Nonesuch century
The Nonesuch century
1936
An episode in the life of the Queen of Sheba
An episode in the life of the Queen of Sheba
1929
The work of the First Editions Club
The work of the First Editions Club
1929
A true recital of the procedure of the first banquet held by the Corvine Society, June 27th, 1929, at the Ambassador Club
A true recital of the procedure of the first banquet held by the Corvine Society, June 27th, 1929, at the Ambassador Club
1929
An anthology of 'Nineties' verse
An anthology of 'Nineties' verse
1928
A bibliography of the first editions of books by William Butler Yeats
A bibliography of the first editions of books by William Butler Yeats
1924
Is it Wise
Is it Wise
Inaugural address of His Oddshippe Bro. A.J.A. Symons (Speculator)
Inaugural address of His Oddshippe Bro. A.J.A. Symons (Speculator)
The art of the book in Great Britain
The art of the book in Great Britain
Tradition and Experiment in Present-Day Literature
Tradition and Experiment in Present-Day Literature
Frederick Baron Corvo
Frederick Baron Corvo