Etheric Vibrations

E.S. Turner

• The Mysterious Marie Corelli: Queen of Victorian Bestsellers by Teresa Ransom
  Sutton, 247 pp, £25.00, June 1999, ISBN 0 7509 1570 6

One of the least predictable roles played by the Devil in popular literature was that of literary adviser and agent in Marie Corelli’s The Sorrows of Satan, the outstanding bestseller of 1895. This singular book was a product of the publishing revolution which saw the death of the three-volume novel, beloved of the circulating libraries, and its replacement by a single, six-shilling volume which a new mass readership, avid for sensation, was ready to snap up on sight. It was also the book in which, on the author’s instructions, a notice was inserted: NO COPIES OF THIS BOOK ARE SENT OUT FOR REVIEW. Miss Corelli had suffered enough from the critics, that Devil’s crew, and if they wanted to read the book they could buy it (supposedly, her Yorkshire terrier was trained to tear up such hostile reviews as reached her). As a tract showing how Lucifer manipulated the literary establishment, The Sorrows of Satan might have enjoyed only a limited appeal, but it was also a passionate denunciation, as by a scatty Savonarola, of all society’s vices, flagitious or trumpery, the whole enriched by fiery apocalyptic visions.