Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Marie Corelli
-
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.
ET
's protagonist, a monster of egotism, mentions Rhoda Broughton
and Corelli
in connection with her own work, but only to suggest that hers is worth yet greater sums of money than theirs.
Taylor, Elizabeth, and Paul Bailey. Angel. Virago, 1984.
76
She...
Leisure and Society
Eliza Lynn Linton
She enjoyed going to and hosting prominent literary and social receptions. Her guests included a wide range of people: popular writers such as Rudyard Kipling
, Marie Corelli
, and Frank Harris
; luminaries of...
Literary responses
Sheila Kaye-Smith
Critic Rachel Anderson
considers that the religous or quasi-religious element in SKS
's characters—their larger-than-life passions and obsessions, their quests and self-lacerations and rebirths—link her work with that of such romance-writers as Florence Barclay
,...
Literary responses
Florence Dixie
FD
received many letters of appreciation from individual readers: from a sailor on a British warship and a soldier with the army in South Africa, as well as from Ouida
and Marie Corelli
, to...
Literary responses
Daphne Du Maurier
Rebecca was DDM
's best known work, earning her massive profits, and it has become one of the most widely read novels of all time.
Kelly, Richard. Daphne du Maurier. Twayne, 1987.
66
The Times Literary Supplement reviewer wrote: In its kind...
Literary responses
Barbara Pym
This became BP
's most widely-reviewed text, and received a mixed reception. Robert Liddell
was again outraged, calling this a dreadful book which had only been made possible by the betrayal of Pym's friends in...
Literary responses
Ouida
Ouida
was hailed as a woman of genius. Not Talent, merely, but Genius in a Belgravia article by Marie Corelli
.
qtd. in
Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Gale Research, 1978–2024, Numerous volumes.
43: 355
Literary responses
Ouida
The Athenæum criticized this novel for mock eloquence
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2016 (16 June 1866): 797
and thought anyone choosing to read it was making a very bad use of their freedom.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2016 (16 June 1866): 798
In...
Occupation
Annie S. Swan
As president of this society ASS
tried to get Marie Corelli
to a meeting, but in vain: Corelli was invincibly prejudiced against journalists, feeling mistreated by them. Swan, on the contrary, admired the women journalists'...
politics
Queen Victoria
In her Passing of the Great Queen, Marie Corelli
, like Sarah Stickney Ellis, linked QV
's femininity to that of the women of Britain, but Corelli transforms her praise of Victoria's womanly virtue...
Publishing
Flora Annie Steel
In her extraordinarily productive year of 1897, FAS
contributed to the Lady's Realm an untitled essay in a debate begun by Marie Corelli
over the value of passionate love, in what was at the time...
Publishing
Jessie Fothergill
The copyright of the novel initially sold for £40 on 26 March 1877. Two months later, Richard Bentley and Son
recognized its commercial possibilities and drew up a new contract, increasing the price to £200...
Textual Features
Julia Pardoe
Indebted to the tradition of Goethe
's Faust, the story may have influenced Marie Corelli
's Sorrows of Satan (1895).
