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 Raffello Cellini, a famous Italian artist. Cellini offers her a strange potion which immediately puts her into a tranquil slumber, in which she experiences divine visions. Upon wakening, she craves more. Later, she meets her guardian angel named Heliobas, the hero of the story, who whisks her through infinite solar systems faster than a shooting star while human spirits fly by like gossamer

Gossamer

Gossamer commonly refers to:* Gossamer , very fine spider silk used for ballooning or kiting by various species of spiders* Gossamer , very light, sheer, gauze-like fabricGossamer may also refer to:- Technology :...

 silk. He shares the truth of religion and the secret of human destiny, but still she longs for more. She comes to understand God as pure light and pure love, but it's not enough that she should see and hear these things from the touch of an angel. She wants to master this ability on her own and seeks a oneness with God through a series of meditative disciplines while locked away in a monastery.

Reception

The novel was rejected for publication by Hall Caine

Hall Caine

Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine CH, KBE , usually known as Hall Caine, was a Manx author. He is best known as a novelist and playwright of the late Victorian and the Edwardian eras. In his time he was exceedingly popular, and at the peak of his success his novels outsold those of his...

—an act that began a life-long feud between Caine and Corelli. After hearing of Caine's harsh criticism, George Bentley suspected that the novel might have commercial appeal and published Corelli's first novel.

Marie Corelli did not expect A Romance of Two Worlds to be so well received. She claims, in the introduction to the second printing in 1887, that, "It was not only read, but loved."

Her scripture, "The Electric Principle of Christianity," included in the novel, is presented as something factual and after the publication of the book, generated a cult following

Cult following

A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...

, in which readers sought more information about her experience. Today, 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...

 devotees hail Corelli as "inspired". Many believe that the book is autobiographical, something Corelli encouraged during her lifetime. In several chapters Corelli hints that Heliobas may be the Count of St. Germain, although Rosicrucian

Rosicrucian

Rosicrucianism is a philosophical secret society, said to have been founded in late medieval Germany by Christian Rosenkreuz. It holds a doctrine or theology "built on esoteric truths of the ancient past", which, "concealed from the average man, provide insight into nature, the physical universe...

 authors identify him as an Illuminati

Illuminati

The Illuminati is a name given to several groups, both real and fictitious. Historically the name refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded on May 1, 1776...

 hierophant

Hierophant

A hierophant is a person who brings religious congregants into the presence of that which is deemed holy. The word comes from Ancient Greece, where it was constructed from the combination of ta hiera, "the holy," and phainein, "to show." In Attica it was the title of the chief priest at the...

, Count A. di Guinotti Heliobas appears in two other Corelli novels, Ardath and The Soul of Lilith.

Themes

In A Romance of Two Worlds, Marie Corelli takes on an old argument between the creationists and the evolutionists. However, her insights are futuristic, including ideas about electricity, solar power, and the properties of the atom.

She explains in the introduction,

"in this cultivated age a wall of skepticism and cynicism is gradually being built up by intellectual thinkers of every nation against all the treats of the Supernatural and Unseen, I am aware that my narration of the events I have recently experienced will be read with incredulity. At a time when the great empire of the Christian Religion is being assailed, or politely ignored by governments and public speakers and teachers, I realize to the fullest extent how daring is any attempt to prove, even by a plain history of strange occurrences happening to one's self, the actual existence of the Supernatural around us; and the absolute certainty of a future state of being, after the passage through that brief soul-topor in which the body perishes, known to us as Death."

The book is scattered with Pantheism

Pantheism

Pantheism is the view that the Universe and God are identical. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. The word derives from the Greek meaning "all" and the Greek meaning "God". As such, Pantheism denotes the idea that "God" is best seen as a process of...

. She also argues that Christ did not come to us as a sacrifice because God is a creator of love and beauty and could not desire "a bleeding victim as sacrifice to appease His Anger [...]."