SLHS: Marie Corelli

History

Marie (b1-5-1855) may have been adopted or was the illegitimate daughter of Dr Charles Mackay, a Scottish poet and journalist, and his second wife Mary Elizabeth Mills. She was known as Mary Mackay or possible other names.

She was brought up in Box Hill and then moved to Kensington where she took up the pseudonym Marie Corelli. Heavily criticised in London she rented Halls Croft and then Dower House then bought Masons Croft where she was very happy. She outsold works by contemporary authors including now legendary names such as Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, and Rudyard Kipling.

● Most Famous & Highly Paid Victorian Writer

Masons Croft, Church Street

Prize giving at the Boat Club after the Stratford Regatta

In her conservatory

On the river by the RSC

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Her house just after she died in 1924

From Oxford Biographies we can learn a lot about reactions to Marie’s writings..

1. In her lifetime, Marie Corelli was one of the most famous and highly paid writers of the day, enjoying an international readership. Her 1895 novel The Sorrows of Satan sold over 50,000 copies in its first seven weeks and has been credited with being the first modern best seller. Though she lapsed into obscurity after her death, in the late Victorian and Edwardian era she outstripped the combined sales of Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, and Arthur Conan Doyle.
   

2. Corelli’s oeuvre includes:
   

3. •31 novels
   

4. •several volumes of short stories,
   

5. •a volume of poetry
   

6. •a number of collections of essays and tracts
   

7. Her works both spanned and combined a range of genres, including the gothic, romance, historical, and society novels. Her energetic writing style, exotic and mysterious locales, and religious eclecticism appealed to a broad cross-class popular readership on a number of levels.
   

8. Sensational Misogyny
   

9. Corelli’s reception among professional critics and reviewers, who characterized her work as florid and sensational, however, was poor. This perception was one shared, with a few exceptions, by the handful of biographers, critics, and scholars who wrote about her between her death in 1924 and the 1990s. As a consequence, much of this early writing on Corelli is characterized by an ill-concealed distaste for her work.
   

10. With the development of the discipline of book history and the growth in interest in popular literature and culture brought about by the rise of cultural studies, Corelli has begun to receive serious critical attention. This attention has focused strongly on Corelli as cultural phenomenon and on the sociohistorical context of her works, though there is a growing interest in critically reevaluating her aesthetic in terms of its relationship to canonical genres and figures.
    

11. Critics & Fans
    

12. Biographies of Corelli tend to fall into two camps. They are either hagiographies that perpetuate the myths and legends around the author (Carr 1901, Coates and Bell 1903, Vyver 1930) or, they are patronizing and dismissive accounts of her career (Bullock 1940, Bigland 1953, Masters 1978).
    

13. These biographies have a kind of historic interest that will be valuable to those seeking a more in-depth understanding of Corelli’s status in certain periods of the 20th century, though the hagiographies, particularly, are not useful for “facts” about her life.
    

14. For those new to Corelli, the most useful biographies are Masters 1978 and Ransom 1999. The former is the more thorough account of the two, though disparaging toward his subject. The latter, by contrast, provides a long-overdue feminist framework within which to understand Corelli’s life. Though the author is not technically a biographer, Federico 2000 (in the chapter “Who Was Marie Corelli?”) offers a cogent analysis of the problematic state of biographical representations of Corelli for researchers who might want an understanding of this important context.
    

See: Oxford Biographies: Marie Corelli by Kristen McLeod 2017

Whatever the reviewers of the time said about her there’s no doubt that Marie was prolific and popular. She did not stray from controversial subjects often mixing pseudo-religious subjects with contemporary narratives of the time. Nearly all of her books started with print runs of 50,000 at a time with many reprints issued. All are available today and certain original copies can command over £100. Here are just a few examples..

A well-known local eccentric, she could often be spotted cruising the River Avon in her gondola complete with her own gondolier brought over from Venice. Despite her literary success not everyone was a fan. The Spectator’s Grant Allen described her as ‘a woman of deplorable talent who imagined that she was a genius’ accusing her of melodramatic writing for the “common multitude”. When she assumed the name "Marie Corelli", at the beginning of her career, she also took on a false backstory writing to her first publisher "I am Venetian and can trace myself back to the famous musician Arcangelo Corelli" and on other occasions claimed to descend from the Doges of Venice.

She was an active member of Stratford’s community. She bought land and fought the local council to protect Shakespeare’s legacy. Indeed many of the town’s 17th century buildings would not be here had it not been for her dogged intervention -particularly properties in Henley Street and Harvard House. She died in 1924.

(see below for just one of her letters courting national opinion in Tatler magazine)

Her former home, Mason Croft in Stratford’s Old Town, is now occupied by the Shakespeare Institute and is part of the University of Birmingham. A collection of her original manuscripts and photographs can be found in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust archives.

She had no children but left everything to her companion Bertha Vyver who died 17 years later.

Early Years

Life In Stratford

Reviews Of Her Work

Her Publishing

Centenary At Marie’s Grave

The year 2024 marked 100 years since Marie Corelli’s death aged 69. On 21st April a ceremony, celebrating her life, her works, her trials and her successes, was held. Mayor Kate Rolfe laid a floral wreath and Nick Birch paid tribute and read one of her famous poems. For further events and more pictures see below.

SLHS Picture & Document Archives..

1. Picture Vault:  Centenary At Marie’s Grave