Books with author MARIE CORELLI

The Sorrows of Satan is an 1895 faustian novel by Marie Corelli. It is widely regarded as one of the world's first bestsellers, partly due to an upheaval in the system British libraries used to purchase their books and partly due to its popular appeal. Roundly condemned by critics for Corelli's moralistic and prosaic style it nonetheless had strong supporters in Oscar Wilde and various members of royalty. Widely ignored in literary circles, it is increasingly regarded as an influential fin de siècle text. The book is occasionally subtitled "Or the Strange Experience of one Geoffrey Tempest, Millionaire".

Though disparaged by literary critics of her day, Marie Corelli was one of the most popular novelists of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Wormwood (1890) is a lurid tale of unrequited love, betrayal, vengeance, murder, suicide, and addiction. The novel recounts the degeneration of Gaston Beauvais, a promising young Parisian man who, betrayed by his fiancée and his best friend, falls prey to the seductive powers of absinthe. The impact of Gaston's debauchery and addiction on himself, his family, and his friends is graphically recounted in this important contribution to the literature of fin de siècle decadence. This Broadview edition includes a critical introduction and a generous selection of contextualizing documents, including excerpts from Corelli's writings on art and literature, nineteenth-century degeneration theories, and clinical and artistic views on absinthe.

Excerpt:As I spoke, the flickering lamp gave a dismal crackle and went out, leaving me in pitch darkness. With an exclamation more strong than reverent, I groped about the room for matches, or failing them, for my hat and coat,—and I was still engaged in a fruitless and annoying search, when I caught a sound of galloping horses' hoofs coming to an abrupt stop in the street below. Surrounded by black gloom, I paused and listened. There was a slight commotion in the basement,—I heard my landlady's accents attuned to nervous civility, mingling with the mellow tones of a deep masculine voice,—then steps, firm and even, ascended the stairs to my landing."The devil is in it!" I muttered vexedly—" Just like my wayward luck!—here comes the very man I intended to avoid!"

This book is an illustrated version of the original The Sorrows of Satan, a faustian novel by Marie Corelli. “Do you know what it is to be poor? Not poor with the arrogant poverty complained of by certain people who have five or six thousand a year to live upon, and who yet swear they can hardly manage to make both ends meet, but really poor,—downright, cruelly, hideously poor, with a poverty that is graceless, sordid and miserable? Poverty that compels you to dress in your one suit of clothes till it is worn threadbare…”

This book is an illustrated version of the original The Sorrows of Satan, a faustian novel by Marie Corelli. “Do you know what it is to be poor? Not poor with the arrogant poverty complained of by certain people who have five or six thousand a year to live upon, and who yet swear they can hardly manage to make both ends meet, but really poor,—downright, cruelly, hideously poor, with a poverty that is graceless, sordid and miserable? Poverty that compels you to dress in your one suit of clothes till it is worn threadbare…”

This book is an illustrated version of the original The Sorrows of Satan, a faustian novel by Marie Corelli. “Do you know what it is to be poor? Not poor with the arrogant poverty complained of by certain people who have five or six thousand a year to live upon, and who yet swear they can hardly manage to make both ends meet, but really poor,—downright, cruelly, hideously poor, with a poverty that is graceless, sordid and miserable? Poverty that compels you to dress in your one suit of clothes till it is worn threadbare…”

A HEAVY storm had raged all day on the north coast of Devon. Summer had worn the garb of winter in a freakish fit of mockery and masquerade; and even among the sheltered orchards of the deeply-embowered valley of Combmartin, many a tough and gnarled branch of many a sturdy apple-tree laden with reddening fruit, had been beaten to the ground by the fury of the blast and the sweeping gusts of rain. Only now, towards late afternoon, were the sullen skies beginning to clear. The sea still lashed the rocks with angry thuds of passion, but the strength of the wind was gradually sinking into a mere breeze, and a warm saffron light in the west showed where the sun, obscured for so many hours, was about to hide his glowing face altogether for the night, behind the black vizor of our upward-moving earth. The hush of the gloaming began to permeate nature; flowers, draggled with rain, essayed to lift their delicate stems from the mould where they had been bowed prone and almost broken,—and a little brown bird fluttering joyously out of a bush where it had taken shelter from the tempest, alighted on a window-sill of one of the nearest human habitations it could perceive, and there piped a gentle roundelay for the cheering and encouragement of those within before so much as preening a feather. The window was open, and in the room beyond it a small boy sat at a school-desk reading, and every now and then making pencil notes on a large folio sheet of paper beside him. He was intent upon his work,—yet he turned quickly at the sound of the bird’s song and listened, his deep thoughtful eyes darkening and softening with a liquid look as of unshed tears. It was only for a moment that he thus interrupted his studies,—anon, he again bent over the book before him with an air of methodical patience and resignation strange to see in one so young. He might have been a bank clerk, or an experienced accountant in a London merchant’s office, from his serious old-fashioned manner, instead of a child barely eleven years of age; indeed, as a matter of fact, there was an almost appalling expression of premature wisdom on his pale wistful features;—the ‘thinking furrow’ already marked his forehead,—and what should still have been the babyish upper curve of his sensitive little mouth, was almost though not quite obliterated by a severe line of constantly practised self-restraint. Stooping his fair curly head over the printed page more closely as the day darkened, he continued reading, pondering, and writing; and the bird, which had come to assure him as well as it could, that fine bright weather,—such weather as boys love,—might be expected to-morrow, seemed disappointed that its gay carol was not more appreciated. At any rate it ceased singing, and began to plume itself with fastidious grace and prettiness, peering round at the youthful student from time to time inquisitively, as much as to say,—“What wonder is this? The rain is over,—the air is fresh,—the flowers are fragrant,—there is light in the sky,—all the world of nature is glad, and rejoices,—yet here is a living creature shut up with a book which surely God never had the making of!—and his face is wan, and his eyes are sad, and he seems not to know the meaning of joy!” The burning bars of saffron widened in the western heavens,—shafts of turquoise-blue, pale rose, and chrysoprase flashed down towards the sea like reflections from the glory of some unbarred gate of Paradise,—and the sun, flaming with August fires, suddenly burst forth in all his splendour.