Marie Corelli Collection
Marie Corelli is one of the most extraordinary characters in all of English literature. While largely forgotten now, she was perhaps the most famous writer of her period. Some of her books went into 50 or more editions. She was a complete fraud even to her name (she was born Mary MacKay being the illegitimate daughter of Charles MacKay the journalist. MacKay's most famous literary work the still justly reprinted " Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" will never equal his major creation - Marie Corelli). The pictures used as frontispieces in her books portray a comely, if slightly plump, beauty while contemporary descriptions usually depict her as short, dumpy, aggressive and both physically and personally repugnant. She fought with everyone and vented her spite on just about everyone who tried to be nice to her. Her vendettas were usually public. What can one say of a writer who in her novel "Barabbas" provided Judas with a sister called Judith Iscariot and who still gets printed today mostly by obscure quasi-religious publishing houses, and whose readers, at least in my experience, have mostly been middle aged black women with Caribbean accents who are fascinated by her ersatz Christian mysticism? And yet no less a writer than Henry Miller in the 1960s recommended that young Americans should read her work. It is these sorts of astounding contradictions which caused no less than three biographers to write her extraordinary story. While some of her books are still relatively common in first editions (an indication of her popularity) others like a couple of her early three-deckers are extraordinarily elusive. Also difficult to locate are the many pamphlets she issued, some in pursuit of literary vengeance against her percieved persecutors, others reflecting her interest in Shakespeare and their shared homes (and in her mind perhaps literary importance) in Stratford-On-Avon. Detailed list and price by request.
