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.
Ouida
was hailed as a woman of genius. Not Talent, merely, but Genius in a Belgravia article by Marie Corelli
.
Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Gale Research.
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...
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...
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Taylor
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.
76
She...
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...
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.
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...
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.
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...