The Sorrows of Satan

**The Devil Arrives with Wealth, Charm, and a Publishing Contract**

**Marie Corelli's Victorian Super-Bestseller**

**A Faustian Satire of Fame, Greed, and Literary Fashion**

**The Popular Sensation the Canon Chose to Forget**

*Before the celebrated masterpieces came The Sorrows of Satan: an early work in which Marie Corelli's defining concerns were already taking shape.*

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The Sorrows of Satan entered literary history as a work once visible enough to shape popular taste, yet now often remembered only at the edges of the canon.

The Sorrows of Satan is an 1895 Faustian novel by Marie Corelli. It is widely regarded as one of the world's first best-sellers - partly due to an upheaval in the system British libraries used to purchase their books,[citation needed] and partly due to its popular appeal. Roundly condemned by contemporary literary critics for Corelli's moralistic and prosaic style, it nonetheless had strong supporters, including 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".

On the surface the plot follows the story of a penniless, starving author called Geoffrey Tempest. So poor that he is behind on his rent and can barely afford light in his room, he receives three letters. The first is from a friend in Australia who has made his fortune and offers to introduce him to a good friend who might be able to lift him from poverty. The second is a note from a solicitor detailing that he has inherited a fortune from a deceased relative. The third is a letter of introduction from a foreign aristocrat called Lucio, who befriends him and proceeds to be his guide in how best to use his newfound wealth. Tempest remains blissfully unaware throughout the novel, despite warnings from people he meets, that Lucio is the earthly incarnation of the Devil. Over the course of the book, his wealth leads to misery. Eventually, when confronted with the true nature of his companion, he renounces evil and returns to society penniless but content with the chance to purify his soul.

Horror critic R. S. Hadji placed The Sorrows of Satan at number one in his list of the worst horror novels ever written. Brian Stableford, discussing Corelli's "narcissistic" novels, described The Sorrows of Satan thus: "as delusions of grandeur and expressions of devout wish-fulfilment go, the fascination of the Devil was an unsurpassable masterstroke".

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*“ novels, described The Sorrows of Satan thus: ”*

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**Why The Sorrows of Satan Still Matters**

Read today, The Sorrows of Satan offers more than the curiosity of a famous writer's beginning. It preserves the risks, experiments, and unresolved tensions of a literary voice before later success made that voice familiar.

*Return to the beginning, and discover how The Sorrows of Satan first opened the path ahead.*