CORELLI, Marie

(1855-1924)

   UK writer, almost certainly born Mary (nicknamed "Minnie") Mackay, though she was secretive about her birth, which may have been illegitimate. She wrote extremely popular bestsellers (selling, in her prime, 100,000-copy editions), although her first novel, A Romance of Two Worlds (1886; rev 1887) - in which interstellar travel is accomplished at about the turn of the century, through "personal electricity" - and its sequel, Ardath: The Story of a Dead Self (1889), were only moderately successful. The Sorrows of Satan (1895), in which a Corelli-like protagonist charismatically cures the Devil of evil, reaches perhaps her peculiar peak. By 1900 her odd brand of sublimated sex, heated religiosity, self-absorbed "female frailty" and unctuous fantasy had begun to lose its appeal; by her death she had been virtually forgotten. Most of her early work can be read as fantasy, though careful explication of the texts may derive a form of religious (RELIGION) explanation for the most extraordinary events. Also of sf interest are The Young Diana: An Experiment of the Future (1918), about a scientific experiment to make a woman (and hence Woman in general) beautiful, and The Secret Power: A Romance of the Present (1921), featuring a huge airship and a secret power that triggers a great earthquake in California.

   JC

   Other works: The Soul of Lilith (1892); Barabbas: A Dream of the World's Tragedy (1893); Ziska (1897); Song of Miriam and Other Stories (coll 1898); The Master-Christian (1900); The Strange Visitation of Josiah McNason: A Christmas Ghost Story (1904 chap; vt The Strange Visitation 1912 chap); The Devil's Motor (in A Christmas Greeting, coll 1901;1910 chap); The Life Everlasting (1911).

   About the author: Now Barabbas was a Rotter (1978) by Brian Masters; "Yesterday's Bestsellers, 1: Marie Corelli" by Brian STABLEFORD in Million, \#1 (1991).

   See also: GODS AND DEMONS.