[Spoto states that Hitchcock read Marie Corelli's "The Sorrows of Satan" in 1920/21 in preparation for helping to make a film of it which was afterwards abandoned.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Hitchcock Print: Book
I suppose there was no man who had a greater command of the public in his day [than Bulwer Lytton]. To be sure, one might say the same of Miss Marie Corelli, who, by the way in the only book of hers I can read, seems to be founded upon Bulwer
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Annette R. Federico notes anecdote in Kent Carr's 1901 biography of Marie Corelli, in which it is reported that New Zealand and Australian soliders in South Africa during the Boer War 'came across a stray copy of The Soul of Lilith on the veld and tore out each page after it was read to pass along to the next man in the troop.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: New Zealand and Australian soldiers Print: Book
'[Kent] Carr cites a letter [Marie] Corelli received from a colors sergeant in the Boer War in May 1900: "Now to tell you about your delightful books which were invaluable to the troops during the siege; one, 'The Sorrows of Satan,' was read and re-read by me, and then handed round. As many as three would be wanting to read it, so where literature was scarce, you can imagine what a blessing it was to have a book like it.'"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon [a colours sergeant] Print: Book
I moved to Marie Corelli and there I found a book of newspaper articles called 'Free Opinions'. The type was large. The words were easy, rather contemptibly so. I read and then stopped in anger. Marie Corelli had insulted me. She was against popular education, against schools, against Public libraries and said that common people like us made the books dirty because we never washed, and that we infected them with disease.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book, Newspaper
I had a look at 'In tune with the infinite'. I moved on to my father's single volume, India paper edition of 'Shakespeare's Complete Works' and started at the beginning with the 'Rape of Lucrece' and the sonnets and continued slowly through the plays during the coming year. For relief I took up Marie Corelli's 'Master Christain' which I found more moving than Shakespeare and more intelligible than 'Thanatopsis'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book
The Duchess of Sutherland to Regy Brett: 'I have dinner on a tray [and], in between mouthfuls of fried sole and partridge, read [Ruskin's] Sesame and Lilies [1865] and [Marie Corelli's] Barabbas by turn.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Millicent Duchess of Sutherland Print: Book
'[Marie] Corelli's rendering of the Resurrection in Barabbas [1893] was read from the pulpit on Easter Sunday at Westminster Abbey by the Dean.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Dean of Westminster Abbey Print: Book
'The editor of the British Weekly, [William] Robertson Nicoll, wrote to [Marie] Corelli on 3 November 1920: "I always think of you in connexion with my old friend Dr Parker [chairman of the Congregational Union, d.1902], who liked nothing so much as to lie on his sofa and hear your books read to him."'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Parker Print: Book
'In Switzerland in 1908 Arnold Bennett met in his hotel an Anglo-Indian army major ... Bennett thought of engaging his opinions about Indian government reform until he noticed the book which the major was reading. It was Corelli's Holy Orders (1908), whereupon, Bennett recorded, "I then gave up hope".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
G. H. Hardy on Marie Corelli's Ardath: "'The most striking feature of the book ... is the colossal number of notes of exclamation -- I counted 39 in 3 pages.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: G. H. Hardy Print: Book
"Rupert Brook [ironically] advised Geoffrey and Maynard Keynes against attempting The Sorrows of Satan, [Marie] Corelli's principal best-seller: 'It is the richest work of humour in the English (?) language: but the effects it produces upon the unwary reader ...! I am now a positive wreck.'"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rupert Brooke Print: Book
"[Gladstone's] daughter Mary and her husband, the Revd Harry Drew, read Vendetta together in 1887, noting 'goodish plot but rather rot otherwise'."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry and Mary Drew Print: Book
"... [Gladstone] ... read The Romance of Two Worlds [sic] before he met ... [Marie Corelli, in June 1889] and started on Ardath a couple of days afterwards, but when he returned to it after two months, he was doing no more than skimming it."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
"... [Gladstone] ... read The Romance of Two Worlds [sic] before he met ... [Marie Corelli, in June 1889] and started on Ardath a couple of days afterwards, but when he returned to it after two months, he was doing no more than skimming it."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Arnold Bennett to George Sturt, 29 October 1895: "'I have just read Marie Corelli's new book -- my first of hers. I can now understand both her popularity and the critics' contempt.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
"...Edward [Prince of Wales] invited ... [Marie Corelli] to a luncheon which the future King George V [then Duke of York] also attended, and both told her that they had read all her books."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Prince of Wales Print: Book
"...Edward [Prince of Wales] invited ... [Marie Corelli] to a luncheon which the future King George V [then Duke of York] also attended, and both told her that they had read all her books."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Duke of York Print: Book
'I have just read Marie Corelli?s new book?my first of hers. I can now understand both her popularity & the critics? contempt.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 22 September 1918:
'V[irginia]. induced me to buy The King's English, a book which teaches you exactly how not to write. The difficulty is that that is precisely what it does do, and now I cannot write a sentence, because as soon as I get one down, I see that it is exactly like some horror of Miss [Marie] Corelli [popular novelist]'s quoted as a warning in that damned book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
'amongst all else she [Causley's mother] found a little time for reading from a two-penny library: novels by the Cornish writers Silas and Joseph Hocking ("Rosemary Carew", by the latter, was a tremendous favourite) and "Stella Dallas" by the American Olive Higgins Prouty. She also had a few books of her own: "The Following of the Star" by Florence L. Barclay, "The Sorrows of Satan" by Marie Corelli, and the like. I tried them all, and enjoyed most: especially "Stella Dallas", which exercised a peculiar fascination over me. I re-read it constantly and with such devotion that she forbade me ever to read it again. I couldn't think why; and not until years later did it occur to me that the central character was a prostitute'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Causley Print: Book
'amongst all else she [Causley's mother] found a little time for reading from a two-penny library: novels by the Cornish writers Silas and Joseph Hocking ("Rosemary Carew", by the latter, was a tremendous favourite) and "Stella Dallas" by the American Olive Higgins Prouty. She also had a few books of her own: "The Following of the Star" by Florence L. Barclay, "The Sorrows of Satan" by Marie Corelli, and the like. I tried them all, and enjoyed most: especially "Stella Dallas", which exercised a peculiar fascination over me. I re-read it constantly and with such devotion that she forbade me ever to read it again. I couldn't think why; and not until years later did it occur to me that the central character was a prostitute'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Causley Print: Book
'Books read from Feby 16th/18
King Richard II Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream do.
Henry the Eighth do.
As You Like It do.
Ziska Marie Corelli
Lorna Doone R. D. Blackmore
Don Quixote de la mancha Vol II
(Miguel de Cervantes Savedra)
Food of the Gods H. G. Wells
Odette's Marriage Albert Delpit
A Walking Gentleman James Prior
The Making of a Marchioness F. H. Burnett
Vixen Mrs. Braddon
The Magnetic North Eliz. Robins
A Roman Singer Marion Crawford
In the Reign of Terror G. A. Henty
Songs of a Sourdough R. W. Service
Forest Folk James Prior
John Henry Hugh McHugh
The Inviolable Sanctuary G. A. Birmingham'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Henry Jones Print: Book
