Rolfe's most important and enduring works are the stories and novels in which he himself is the thinly-disguised protagonist:
Stories Toto Told Me (1898), a collection of six stories, later expanded to thirty-two and republished as In His Own Image (1901), in which ‘Don Friderico’ and his teenage acolytes embark on long walking tours in the Italian countryside, even as far from Rome as the eastern coast of Italy.
The youths’ leader, the sixteen-year-old Toto, recounts tales of saints behaving like pagan gods.
The stories are richly Catholic and unashamedly superstitious, and the saints who figure in them are hedonistic, vengeful and (though not licentious) entirely comfortable with nudity, diametrically opposite to any Protestant ideal of sainthood.

Hadrian the Seventh (1904), with an original and compelling plot, is Rolfe's most famous novel.
Rolfe portrays himself as an Englishman with a quintessentially English name, 'George Arthur Rose,' (after Saint George, King Arthur, and England's national flower) who, having originally been rejected for the priesthood, finds himself the object of a spectacular and highly improbable change of mind on the part of the church hierarchy, who elect him to the papacy.
 Rose takes the name Hadrian VII and embarks upon a programme of ecclesiastical and geopolitical reform; the only English pope was Hadrian IV, and the last non-Italian pope had been Hadrian VI.
  More self-indulgently, he takes the opportunity to review his past life and to reward or punish his friends and acquaintances according to what he believes to be their just deserts.
 Hadrian is thus essentially an exercise in wish-fulfilment.

Nicholas Crabbe (written 1900–1904, published 1958) tells the story of Rolfe's first attempts to achieve publication, with starring roles for Henry Harland, John Lane and Grant Richards.
 In this novel Rolfe has given himself a new fictional name, 'Nicholas Crabbe,' and its plot is a blow-by-blow chronicle of events, reproducing many of the publishers' letters and Rolfe's replies to them.
Nicholas Crabbe is an undistinguished novel, but it is rich in autobiographical detail.

The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole (written 1910–1913, thought lost, found in Chatto & Windus's safe, published 1934) is set in Venice and reintroduces the reader to 'Nicholas Crabbe.'
It has three interlocking plots: Crabbe’s efforts to get his books published, in the face of obstacles placed in their way by his friends and agents in England, and his consequent economic difficulties; his rescue of a sixteen-year-old girl from the Messina earthquake and employment of her as his assistant and gondolier, dressed in male garments to avoid scandal; and the transcendent beauty of Venice itself and the role it plays in the lives of its votaries.
Extracts from the novel’s beautiful descriptions of Venice appear regularly in guidebooks and modern anthologies.
Unlike Rolfe’s other novels, this one ends happily, with a lucrative book contract and a declaration of love. "
The desire and pursuit of the whole" is the definition of love, according to Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium.

In 1912, the year before his death, Rolfe began to write another autobiographical novel, The Freeing of the Soul, or The Seven Degrees (written 1912–1913, published 1995), of which only a few pages have survived.
 Set in the fifth century, the novel was to have as its protagonist a middle-aged Byzantine bishop named Septimius, preoccupied with the likelihood of another of the barbarian attacks which had been terrifying his Venetian flock.
The novel was a departure for Rolfe, as his four previous autobiographical works had been set in his own time.
Rolfe's most important and enduring works are the stories and novels in which he himself is the thinly-disguised protagonist:
Stories Toto Told Me (1898), a collection of six stories, later expanded to thirty-two and republished as In His Own Image (1901), in which ‘Don Friderico’ and his teenage acolytes embark on long walking tours in the Italian countryside, even as far from Rome as the eastern coast of Italy. The youths’ leader, the sixteen-year-old Toto, recounts tales of saints behaving like pagan gods. The stories are richly Catholic and unashamedly superstitious, and the saints who figure in them are hedonistic, vengeful and (though not licentious) entirely comfortable with nudity, diametrically opposite to any Protestant ideal of sainthood.
Hadrian the Seventh (1904), with an original and compelling plot, is Rolfe's most famous novel. Rolfe portrays himself as an Englishman with a quintessentially English name, 'George Arthur Rose,' (after Saint George, King Arthur, and England's national flower) who, having originally been rejected for the priesthood, finds himself the object of a spectacular and highly improbable change of mind on the part of the church hierarchy, who elect him to the papacy.  Rose takes the name Hadrian VII and embarks upon a programme of ecclesiastical and geopolitical reform; the only English pope was Hadrian IV, and the last non-Italian pope had been Hadrian VI.   More self-indulgently, he takes the opportunity to review his past life and to reward or punish his friends and acquaintances according to what he believes to be their just deserts.  Hadrian is thus essentially an exercise in wish-fulfilment.
Nicholas Crabbe (written 1900–1904, published 1958) tells the story of Rolfe's first attempts to achieve publication, with starring roles for Henry Harland, John Lane and Grant Richards.  In this novel Rolfe has given himself a new fictional name, 'Nicholas Crabbe,' and its plot is a blow-by-blow chronicle of events, reproducing many of the publishers' letters and Rolfe's replies to them. Nicholas Crabbe is an undistinguished novel, but it is rich in autobiographical detail.
The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole (written 1910–1913, thought lost, found in Chatto & Windus's safe, published 1934) is set in Venice and reintroduces the reader to 'Nicholas Crabbe.' It has three interlocking plots: Crabbe’s efforts to get his books published, in the face of obstacles placed in their way by his friends and agents in England, and his consequent economic difficulties; his rescue of a sixteen-year-old girl from the Messina earthquake and employment of her as his assistant and gondolier, dressed in male garments to avoid scandal; and the transcendent beauty of Venice itself and the role it plays in the lives of its votaries. Extracts from the novel’s beautiful descriptions of Venice appear regularly in guidebooks and modern anthologies. Unlike Rolfe’s other novels, this one ends happily, with a lucrative book contract and a declaration of love. "The desire and pursuit of the whole" is the definition of love, according to Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium.
In 1912, the year before his death, Rolfe began to write another autobiographical novel, The Freeing of the Soul, or The Seven Degrees (written 1912–1913, published 1995), of which only a few pages have survived.  Set in the fifth century, the novel was to have as its protagonist a middle-aged Byzantine bishop named Septimius, preoccupied with the likelihood of another of the barbarian attacks which had been terrifying his Venetian flock. The novel was a departure for Rolfe, as his four previous autobiographical works had been set in his own time.
Frederick Rolfe