The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography

I first came across the name of Aleister Crowley when I acquired a copy of Maugham’s 1907 novel ‘The Magician’. The character Oliver Haddo is said to be based on Crowley. It made me want to read more.Symons’ book is a scholarly work if it is sometimes written in the style of a boys own adventure story. It traces, quoting its sources, a life which began in London in 1860 and ended in Venice in 1913.In between these dates the subject lived the live of a chancer;of a ‘ducker-and-diver’ and died in poverty. There is very little mention of his writings other than his novel Hadrian 1V,although he wrote copiously on the black arts (The Goetia,The Book of the Law etc) and no mention of his infamous stay in Sicily mentioned by Cammell (Aleister Crowley the Black Magician 1969).However, reading ‘The Search for Corvo’ with no other knowledge about Crowley you feel that you have read a well-written thoroughly researched study of a very unusual man.(To confuse the picture further see also ‘The Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuberg’ Fuller 1990)