Idol of Suburbia: Marie Corelli and Late-Victorian Literary Culture.(Book Review)

Publication: CLIO

Publication Date: 22-MAR-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 Indiana University, Purdue University of Fort Wayne

By Annette R. Federico. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000. 201 pages.

Marie Corelli (1855-1924) is no longer a name to conjure with, yet she was an unparalleled literary phenomenon and it is arguable that during her time she was, after Victoria, the most famous woman in England. Following the huge and unexpected success of her first novel, A Romance of Two Worlds, in 1886, Corelli published almost a novel a year for the rest of her career. Her novel Barabbas: A Dream of the World's Tragedy (1893)outsold all previous Corelli books, going into seven editions in seven months, and in its single-volume edition selling ten thousand copies in a single week. The Sorrows of Satan (1895) had an initial sale greater than that of any other English novel, selling twenty-five thousand copies in one week and fifty thousand in seven weeks; it has a substantial claim to be considered the first real "best-seller" in English, and was enormously widely read, by all segments of British society (7). Her personal fame was even greater than these figures might imply, since her argumentative and effusive personality and her eagerness to engage in public debates earned her the sobriquet "the Life-Boat of Journalism." Although her popularity tailed off sharply following the First World War, by her death in 1924 A Romance of Two Worlds was in its thirty-eighth edition and The Sorrows of Satan in its sixtieth (162).

Given fame of this magnitude, it is...

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