When the Devil arrives in fin de siècle London in the form of the handsome and charming Prince Lucio Rimânez, his work promises to be easy. After all, in a world where science and materialism have replaced a belief in God, who will suspect Lucio of being Satan in disguise? Lucio sets his sights on Geoffrey Tempest, a starving novelist who has just inherited a fortune, and promises to guide him to power and fame. As the tragic story of Geoffrey's meteoric rise and fall unfolds, Marie Corelli lays bare the hypocrisy, immorality, and irreligiousness of modern life, satire which is as fresh and relevant today as ever.
The Sorrows of Satan (1895) is Corelli's masterpiece and the novel where her views on religion and society find their clearest and fullest expression. And on another level it is a savage and bitter riposte to her critics, who had vilified her previous novel, Barabbas(1893).
Marie Corelli (1855-1924) was one of the most popular and best-selling novelists of the late Victorian period, her books selling in the millions of copies worldwide. Although she saw herself as a female Shakespeare, critics have tended largely to dismiss her as a popular hack. This new edition of her most powerful novel allows twenty-first century readers to rediscover and reevaluate this fascinating writer. The Valancourt Books edition of The Sorrows of Satan includes the unabridged text of the first edition as well as a new introduction and notes by Julia Kuehn and an appendix containing rare contemporary reviews of Corelli's works.