Marie Corelli
Encyclopedia
Marie Corelli was a British novelist. She enjoyed a period of great literary success from the publication of her first novel in 1886 until World War I
. Corelli's novels sold more copies than the combined sales of popular contemporaries, including Arthur Conan Doyle
, H. G. Wells
, and Rudyard Kipling
, although critics often derided her work as "the favourite of the common multitude."
, and his servant, Elizabeth Mills. In 1866, the 11 year old Mary Mackay was sent to a Parisian convent to further her education. She returned to Britain four years later in 1870.
Mackay began her career as a musician, adopting the name Marie Corelli for her billing. She gave up music, turning to writing instead and in 1886 published her first novel, A Romance of Two Worlds
. In her time, she was the most widely read author of fiction. Her works were collected by members of the British Royal Family
, and by Winston
and Randolph Churchill
, among others.
Mackay faced criticism from the literary elite for her overly melodramatic writing. Grant Allen
in the pages of The Spectator, called her "a woman of deplorable talent who imagined that she was a genius, and was accepted as a genius by a public to whose commonplace sentimentalities and prejudices she gave a glamorous setting." James Agate
represented her as combining "the imagination of a Poe
with the style of an Ouida
and the mentality of a nursemaid."
A recurring theme in Corelli's books is her attempt to reconcile Christianity with reincarnation
, astral projection
and other mystical ideas. Her books were a part of the foundation of today's New Age
religion. Her portrait was painted by Helen Donald-Smith
.
Corelli spent her final years in Stratford-upon-Avon
. There, she fought hard for the preservation of Stratford's 17th-century buildings, and donated money to help their owners remove the plaster or brickwork that often covered their original timber framed
facades. Novelist Barbara Comyns Carr
mentions Corelli's guest appearance at an exhibition of Anglo Saxon items found at Bidford-on-Avon
in 1923.
Corelli's eccentricity became well known. She would boat on the Avon
in a gondola
, complete with a gondolier that she had brought over from Venice
. In his autobiography
, Mark Twain
, who had a deep dislike of Corelli, describes visiting her in Stratford and how the meeting changed his perception. She died in Stratford and is buried there in the Evesham Road cemetery. Her house, Mason Croft, still stands on Church Street and is now the home of the Shakespeare Institute
.
For over forty years, Corelli lived with Vyver her companion Bertha Vyver. and the author left everything to her friend when she died. Although Corelli did not self identify as a lesbian, biographers and critics have noted the erotic descriptions of female beauty that appear regularly in Corelli's novels. Descriptions of the deep love between the two women by their contemporaries have added to the speculation that their relationship may have been romantic. Following Corelli's death, Sidney Walton reminisced in the Yorkshire Evening News:
Corelli also expressed a passion for the artist Arthur Severn, to whom she wrote daily letters from 1906 to 1917. Severn was the son of Joseph Severn
and close friend to John Ruskin
. In 1910, Arthur Severn and Corelli collaborated on The Devil's Motor with Severn providing illustrations for Corelli's story. Her love for the long-married painter, her only known romantic attachment to a man, remained unrequited and, in fact, Severn often belittled Corelli's success.
Corelli is generally accepted to have been the inspiration for at least two of E. F. Benson's characters in his Lucia series of six novels and a short story. The main character, Emmeline "Lucia" Lucas, is a vain and snobbish woman of the upper middle class with an obsessive desire to be the leading light of her community, to associate with the nobility, to see her name reported in the social columns, and a comical pretension to education and musical talent, neither of which she possesses. She also pretends to be able to speak Italian, something Corelli was known to have done. The character of Miss Susan Leg is an author of highly successful but pulpish romance novels who writes under the name of Rudolph da Vinci and first appears in Benson's work a few years after Marie Corelli's death in 1924.
In 2007, the British film Angel, based on a book by Elizabeth Taylor, was released as a thinly-veiled biography of Corelli. The film starred Romola Garai
in the Corelli role and also starred Sam Neill
and Charlotte Rampling
. It was directed by François Ozon
, who stated "the character of Angel was inspired by Marie Corelli, a contemporary of Oscar Wilde and Queen Victoria's favourite writer. Corelli was one of the first writers to become a star, writing best-sellers for an adoring public. Today she has been totally forgotten, even in England."
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. Corelli's novels sold more copies than the combined sales of popular contemporaries, including Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
, H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
, and Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
, although critics often derided her work as "the favourite of the common multitude."
Life
Born Mary Mackay in London, she was the illegitimate daughter of the Scottish poet and songwriter, Dr. Charles MackayCharles Mackay
Charles Mackay was a Scottish poet, journalist, and song writer.-Life:Charles Mackay was born in Perth, Scotland. His father was by turns a naval officer and a foot soldier; his mother died shortly after his birth. Charles was educated at the Caledonian Asylum, London, and at Brussels, but spent...
, and his servant, Elizabeth Mills. In 1866, the 11 year old Mary Mackay was sent to a Parisian convent to further her education. She returned to Britain four years later in 1870.
Mackay began her career as a musician, adopting the name Marie Corelli for her billing. She gave up music, turning to writing instead and in 1886 published her first novel, A Romance of Two Worlds
Romance of Two Worlds
-Synopsis:A Romance of Two Worlds starts with a young heroine, in first person, telling her story of a debilitating illnesses that includes depression and thoughts of suicide. Her doctor is unable to help her and sends her off on a holiday where she meets a mystical character by the name of...
. In her time, she was the most widely read author of fiction. Her works were collected by members of the British Royal Family
British Royal Family
The British Royal Family is the group of close relatives of the monarch of the United Kingdom. The term is also commonly applied to the same group of people as the relations of the monarch in her or his role as sovereign of any of the other Commonwealth realms, thus sometimes at variance with...
, and by Winston
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
and Randolph Churchill
Randolph Churchill
Major Randolph Frederick Edward Spencer-Churchill, MBE was the son of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine. He was a Conservative Member of Parliament for Preston from 1940 to 1945....
, among others.
Mackay faced criticism from the literary elite for her overly melodramatic writing. Grant Allen
Grant Allen
Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen was a science writer, author and novelist, and a successful upholder of the theory of evolution.-Biography:...
in the pages of The Spectator, called her "a woman of deplorable talent who imagined that she was a genius, and was accepted as a genius by a public to whose commonplace sentimentalities and prejudices she gave a glamorous setting." James Agate
James Agate
James Evershed Agate was a British diarist and critic. In the period between the wars, he was one of Britain's most influential theatre critics...
represented her as combining "the imagination of a Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
with the style of an Ouida
Ouida
Ouida was the pseudonym of the English novelist Maria Louise Ramé .-Biography:...
and the mentality of a nursemaid."
A recurring theme in Corelli's books is her attempt to reconcile Christianity with reincarnation
Reincarnation
Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...
, astral projection
Astral projection
Astral projection is an interpretation of out-of-body experience that assumes the existence of an "astral body" separate from the physical body and capable of traveling outside it...
and other mystical ideas. Her books were a part of the foundation of today's New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
religion. Her portrait was painted by Helen Donald-Smith
Helen Donald-Smith
Helen Donald-Smith was an English artist who worked in oil and watercolour, and was active circa 1890–1925. Her work featured landscapes, particularly of Venice, and portraits, including that of Brigadier General F.W...
.
Corelli spent her final years in Stratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon is a market town and civil parish in south Warwickshire, England. It lies on the River Avon, south east of Birmingham and south west of Warwick. It is the largest and most populous town of the District of Stratford-on-Avon, which uses the term "on" to indicate that it covers...
. There, she fought hard for the preservation of Stratford's 17th-century buildings, and donated money to help their owners remove the plaster or brickwork that often covered their original timber framed
Timber framing
Timber framing , or half-timbering, also called in North America "post-and-beam" construction, is the method of creating structures using heavy squared off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden pegs . It is commonplace in large barns...
facades. Novelist Barbara Comyns Carr
Barbara Comyns Carr
- Early life :Barbara Irene Veronica Bayley was born in the Warwickshire village of Bidford-on-Avon in 1907. She was one of six children and the family home was Bell Court on the banks of the River Avon...
mentions Corelli's guest appearance at an exhibition of Anglo Saxon items found at Bidford-on-Avon
Bidford-on-Avon
Bidford-on-Avon is a large village and civil parish in the English county of Warwickshire. In the 2001 census it had a population of 4,830.-Location:...
in 1923.
Corelli's eccentricity became well known. She would boat on the Avon
River Avon, Warwickshire
The River Avon or Avon is a river in or adjoining the counties of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire in the Midlands of England...
in a gondola
Gondola
The gondola is a traditional, flat-bottomed Venetian rowing boat, well suited to the conditions of the Venetian Lagoon. For centuries gondolas were the chief means of transportation and most common watercraft within Venice. In modern times the iconic boats still have a role in public transport in...
, complete with a gondolier that she had brought over from Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
. In his autobiography
Mark Twain's Autobiography
Autobiography of Mark Twain or Mark Twain’s Autobiography refers to a lengthy set of reminiscences, dictated, for the most part, in the last few years of American author Mark Twain's life and left in typescript and manuscript at his death...
, Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
, who had a deep dislike of Corelli, describes visiting her in Stratford and how the meeting changed his perception. She died in Stratford and is buried there in the Evesham Road cemetery. Her house, Mason Croft, still stands on Church Street and is now the home of the Shakespeare Institute
Shakespeare Institute
The Shakespeare Institute is a centre for postgraduate study dedicated to the study of William Shakespeare and the literature of the English Renaissance. It is part of the University of Birmingham, and is located in Stratford-upon-Avon....
.
For over forty years, Corelli lived with Vyver her companion Bertha Vyver. and the author left everything to her friend when she died. Although Corelli did not self identify as a lesbian, biographers and critics have noted the erotic descriptions of female beauty that appear regularly in Corelli's novels. Descriptions of the deep love between the two women by their contemporaries have added to the speculation that their relationship may have been romantic. Following Corelli's death, Sidney Walton reminisced in the Yorkshire Evening News:
One of the great friendships of modern times knit together the hearts and minds of Miss Marie Corelli and Miss Bertha Vyver... Her own heart was the hearth of her comrade, and thought and love of 'Marie' thrilled through Miss Vyver's veins... In loneliness of soul, Miss Vyver mourns the loss of one who was nearer and tenderer to her than a sister... Over the fireplace in the fine, old spacious lounge at Mason Croft the initials M. C. and B. V. were carven into one symbol. And it was the symbol of life.
Corelli also expressed a passion for the artist Arthur Severn, to whom she wrote daily letters from 1906 to 1917. Severn was the son of Joseph Severn
Joseph Severn
Joseph Severn was an English portrait and subject painter and a personal friend of the famous English poet John Keats...
and close friend to John Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
. In 1910, Arthur Severn and Corelli collaborated on The Devil's Motor with Severn providing illustrations for Corelli's story. Her love for the long-married painter, her only known romantic attachment to a man, remained unrequited and, in fact, Severn often belittled Corelli's success.
Corelli is generally accepted to have been the inspiration for at least two of E. F. Benson's characters in his Lucia series of six novels and a short story. The main character, Emmeline "Lucia" Lucas, is a vain and snobbish woman of the upper middle class with an obsessive desire to be the leading light of her community, to associate with the nobility, to see her name reported in the social columns, and a comical pretension to education and musical talent, neither of which she possesses. She also pretends to be able to speak Italian, something Corelli was known to have done. The character of Miss Susan Leg is an author of highly successful but pulpish romance novels who writes under the name of Rudolph da Vinci and first appears in Benson's work a few years after Marie Corelli's death in 1924.
In 2007, the British film Angel, based on a book by Elizabeth Taylor, was released as a thinly-veiled biography of Corelli. The film starred Romola Garai
Romola Garai
Romola Sadie Garai is an English actress. She is known for appearing in the movies Amazing Grace, Atonement, and Glorious 39, and for appearing in the BBC adaptation of Emma.-Early life:...
in the Corelli role and also starred Sam Neill
Sam Neill
Nigel John Dermot "Sam" Neill, DCNZM, OBE is a New Zealand actor. He is well known for his starring role as paleontologist Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III....
and Charlotte Rampling
Charlotte Rampling
Charlotte Rampling, OBE is an English actress. Her career spans four decades in English-language as well as French and Italian cinema.- Early life :...
. It was directed by François Ozon
François Ozon
François Ozon is a French film director and screenwriter and whose films are usually characterized by sharp satirical wit and a freewheeling view on human sexuality....
, who stated "the character of Angel was inspired by Marie Corelli, a contemporary of Oscar Wilde and Queen Victoria's favourite writer. Corelli was one of the first writers to become a star, writing best-sellers for an adoring public. Today she has been totally forgotten, even in England."
Novels
- A Romance of Two WorldsRomance of Two Worlds-Synopsis:A Romance of Two Worlds starts with a young heroine, in first person, telling her story of a debilitating illnesses that includes depression and thoughts of suicide. Her doctor is unable to help her and sends her off on a holiday where she meets a mystical character by the name of...
(1886) - Vendetta!; or, The Story of One Forgotten (1886)
- Thelma (1887)
- Ardath (1889)
- Wormwood: A Drama of ParisWormwood: A Drama of ParisWormwood: A Drama of Paris is a proto-modernist novel written by Marie Corelli. Although the novel was published in Europe in the traditional Victorian three-volume format, it addressed the very modern effects and woes of absinthe in fin-de-siecle Paris.The European edition was published in 1890...
(1890) - The Soul of Lilith (1892)
- Barabbas, A Dream of the Word's Tragedy (1893)
- The Sorrows of SatanThe Sorrows of SatanThe Sorrows of Satan is an 1895 faustian novel by Marie Corelli. It is widely regarded as one of the world's first bestsellers, partly due to an upheaval in the system British libraries used to purchase their books and partly due to its popular appeal...
(1895) - The Mighty Atom (1896)
- The Murder of Delicia (1896)
- Ziska (1897)
- Boy (1900)
- Jane (1900)
- The Master-Christian (1900)
- Temporal Power: a Study in Supremacy (1902)
- God's Good Man (1904)
- The Strange Visitation of Josiah McNasson: A Ghost Story (1904)
- Treasure of Heaven (1906)
- Holy Orders, The Tragedy of a Quiet Life (1908)
- Life Everlasting (1911)
- Innocent, Her Fancy and His FactInnocent, Her Fancy and His FactInnocent, Her Fancy and His Fact is a 1914 novel by Marie Corelli. Its theme is the mistreatment of illegitimate children. It also contains several proto-feminist polemics against marriage.-Plot:...
(1914) - The Young Diana (1918)
- The Secret Power (1921)
- Love and the Philosopher (1923)
Short story collections
- Cameos: Short Stories (1895)
- The Song of Miriam & Other Stories (1898)
- Delicia & Other Stories (1907)
- The Love of Long Ago, and Other Stories (1918)
Non-fiction
- The Modern Marriage Market (1898) (with others)
- Free Opinions Freely Expressed (1905)
- The Silver Domino; or, Side Whispers, Social & Literary (1892) (anonymous)
Film adaptations
- Vendetta (1915)
- Thelma (1916) Fox Film 1918, I.B. Davidson 1922 Chester Bennett
- Wormwood (1915) Fox
- Temporal Power (1916) G.B. Samuelson
- God's Good Man (1919) Stoll Films
- Holy Orders (1917) I.B. Davidson
- Innocent (1921) Stoll Films
- The Young Diana (1922) Paramount PicturesParamount PicturesParamount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
- The Sorrows of Satan (1926) Paramount
Theatre adaptations
- Vendetta (2007) Adapted by Gillian HiscottGillian HiscottGillian Hiscott is an author and playwright, born in Plymouth, Devon, United Kingdom, in 1959 whose plays have been performed both in London and at the Edinburgh Festival. Her work in the theatre has been largely to promote the work of British female writers and she is the only published adaptor...
The Library Theatre Ltd; published by Jasper - The Young Diana (2008) Gillian Hiscott; published by Jasper
External links
- Works by Marie Corelli at Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
(scanned books original editions color illustrated) (plain text and HTML) - Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Marie Corelli & her Occult Tales, 1998
- Private Collection, "A rare collection of signed books, letters and personal items from Marie, also complete Bibliography." 2004
- Marie Corelli's Wormwood- At The Virtual Absinthe Museum: Photographs of the rare 1890 London first edition, and extensive extracts from the book downloadable in PDF format.
- "The Devil's Motor," illustrated by Arthur Severn.
- Marie Corelli Collection at Yale University Music Library