Marie Corelli

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Standard Name: Corelli, Marie
Birth Name: Mary Mackay
Nickname: Minnie
Pseudonym: Marie Corelli
MC was one of the first authors of the modern best seller. She published thirty-one popular novels, including one, published posthumously, which fictionalizes events from her own life. She also wrote short stories (collected in four volumes). She wrote poetry as a child and published a collection of poems posthumously. Her novels have been seen as blending the conventions of the romance, gothic, historical, and society novels. At the turn of the century, sales of each of her novels were in the range of 175,000 copies; at the end of world war one her fame and sales fell drastically. She was the first woman to lecture before the Royal Society of Literature : The Signs of the Times was presented on 20 February 1902.
Black and white photo of Mary Corelli by F. Adrian, published in 1904. She sits in a chair that is adorned in unusual style with tassels, wearing a pale dress and holding an open book. Her hair is short and curly, artfully disarranged.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Elma Napier
In spite of the fact that her family did not value literature as much as games, and that her mother had specific ideas about what girls should read, EN devoured every book she could get...
Education Amanda McKittrick Ros
AMKR gives no solid information about whether she ever attended school, or if so which one. She was deeply influenced during her childhood by romantic novels, particularly R. M. Roche 's The Children of the...
Education Elaine Feinstein
Her MA followed automatically three years after her Cambridge BA. She achieved her Part I bar finals in London, but dropped the idea of practising law when she understood how much money she would...
Education Naomi Jacob
One of NJ 's favourite home occupations even as a small child was improvised acting, with her sister in spear-carrying roles. She also learned cricket and football, and her grandfather Collinson taught her whist. She...
Education Alison Uttley
It hurt her pride that she made the scholarship list only after someone else had declined. She travelled daily by milk cart and milk train to this old-fashioned, rigorous school where teachers routinely used ridicule...
Family and Intimate relationships Viola Tree
The wedding attracted so many people that traffic round about St. Martin's Church had for some hours to be diverted.
Beerbohm, Max, editor. Herbert Beerbohm Tree: Some Memories of Him and of His Art. Hutchinson, 1920.
143
The best man was Denys Finch Hatton , a friend of Alan Parsons since...
Friends, Associates John Strange Winter
JSW had an extensive social circle in London—her biographer, Oliver Bainbridge , notes that a number of social claims were made upon her by reason of her popularity, and that these were always in advance...
Friends, Associates Ménie Muriel Dowie
As a public literary figure MMD moved amongst the major writers of her day. At the Women Writers' Dinner of the New Vagabonds Club in June 1895, she spoke alongside Adeline Sergeant , Christabel Coleridge
Friends, Associates Annie S. Swan
She also mentions a great many literary names. Among women writers whom she calls the stars of her generation were Mary Augusta Ward , Lucas Malet , Lucy Clifford , Sarah Grand , Violet Hunt
Friends, Associates Ella Wheeler Wilcox
On one of her visits to England she was entertained at Stratford by Marie Corelli .
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler. The Worlds and I. Gay and Hancock, 1918.
213
Friends, Associates George Meredith
GM knew the poets Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Swinburne —he sometimes stayed with them while in London. He also knew Emma Caroline Wood , Lucie Duff Gordon , Leslie Stephen , Anne Thackeray Ritchie
Friends, Associates Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
In London JFLW associated with writers such as Marie Corelli , Ouida , and Violet Hunt . Oscar , an emerging celebrity, introduced his mother to the city's artistic circle.
Intertextuality and Influence Rose Allatini
But the manuscript never reaches a publisher, for Olive gives it to her mother, aunt, and sister to read, with fearful results. To her aunt it is indecent and impossible; to her mother it is...
Intertextuality and Influence Marjorie Bowen
Critic Maria Aline Seabra Ferreira comments that the book combines historical and supernatural elements reminiscent of Marie Corelli 'sThe Sorrows of Satan (1895) with the baroque aspects of Jacobean tragedy. The novel is also...
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Taylor
Paul Bailey opens his introduction by quoting extensively from a scene in Ethel M. Dell 's The Top of the World which features a Proud Beauty and a Faithful Retainer. He also links Angel with...

Timeline

1681
The baroque composer Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) published his first twelve Church Sonatas, dedicated to Queen Christina of Sweden (who had abdicated and was living in Rome).
2 July 1914
The first issue of the magazine Blast, edited by Wyndham Lewis , formally announced the arrival of Vorticism, an avant-garde movement in art.
1951
Theatre historian Allardyce Nicoll established the Shakespeare Institute ; it is part of Birmingham University and is housed in Mason Croft at Stratford, formerly the home of novelist Marie Corelli .