The author Marie Corelli (1855 - 1924) was described in The Spectator as: “a woman of deplorable talent who imagined that she was a genius, & was accepted as a genius by a public to whose commonplace sentimentalities & prejudices she gave a glamorous setting.” Her blend of romance, mysticism, religion, the occult, new age philosophy and sentimentality may have been derided by critics, but her novels were devoured and adored by the public: ranging from shop girls to royalty, including Queen Victoria who collected all of her books. Her ninth and most successful novel, The Sorrows of Satan (1895) broke all previous records in British publishing history and is regarded as one of the first international bestsellers. She became the highest paid published author in England and sold more copies than many of her literary heavyweight contemporaries combined, including Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, and Rudyard Kipling. However, despite Corelli’s commercial success in her own lifetime, today, she has all but vanished from our literary landscape.
Corelli’s personal life was as eccentric as many of her novels. Born Isabella Mary Mackay, the illegitimate daughter of journalist, author and poet Charles Mackay, she adopted her nom de plume, Marie Corelli, during a brief period in her life when she attempted to make her living from singing. Corelli never married and it is widely accepted that she was in a lesbian relationship with her companion for over 40 years, Bertha Vyver. She was also known to boat along the River Avon in a Gondola with a Gondolier she had brought over from Venice.
Although The Sorrows of Satan was championed by Oscar Wilde and her novel Ardath (1889) drew praise from Tennyson, her lasting legacy is, arguably, more for her work in conservation than her literary prowess. During her final years, in her adopted hometown, Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare, she fought to preserve his shrine in the Church of the Holy Trinity and prevent cottages owned by his descendants from being demolished to make way for a Carnegie library. She, also, bought and restored a 16th-century house, Mason Croft, which is now the Shakespeare Institute of the University of Birmingham.
The book in the photographs is a first edition of Corelli’s twentieth novel, Innocent, which was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1914.
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Charles Mozely (1912-1991) was a prolific English artist, illustrator and graphic designer whose work has drawn comparisons with Toulouse-Lautrec. He found success as a book illustrator and jacket designer in both Britain and the United States, illustrating over 80 books and more than 60 jacket designs. His belief that the artist was responsible not just for creating the illustration, but also how it should be reproduced, led to his involvement in typographic design and interest in the type of paper and production method used.
The jacket design for this first edition of Iris Murdoch’s The Sandcastle, published by Chatto & Windus in 1957, is illustrative of Mozely’s ability to suggest character and their relationships with each other without necessarily drawing on a specific scene in the narrative. However, deviations from the author’s descriptions were not tolerated by the publisher and he was required to change the hair of the male character on the front cover from a shock of black hair to a thinning white scalp.
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Balthazar is the second of four novels - each telling the same story from a difference perspective - in Lawrence Durrell’s Magnum opus: ‘The Alexandria Quartet.’ In this novel, Darley, from whose viewpoint the first novel Justine is told, is forced to revisit, re-evaluate and revise his previous interpretation of the past when his Alexandrian friend Balthazar pays an unexpected visit to his Corfu island retreat.
Durrell presents multiple perspectives in his Quartet, creating what he described as a “stereoscopic effect,” to give a greater sense of verisimilitude. However, whilst more knowledge is gained with each novel; Durrell, perversely, also makes the reader aware - that by its transient and unstable nature - the truth is ultimately elusive.
Like the past Durrell writes about, so too has his Quartet undergone continuous reinterpretation. A commercial and critical success at the time of its initial publication; it later fell out of fashion; and is currently enjoying something of a revival, including being selected last year for discussion and analysis by The Guardian Reading Group.
The book in the photographs is a First Edition, second impression, published by Faber in 1958 with a jacket design by Berthold Wolpe.
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Sir Roger de Coverley is a collection of stories about a loveable, if slightly foolish, country squire and his small band of gentleman friends, told by a fictional narrator Mr. Spectator who professes to live in the world “rather as a Spectator of Mankind, than as one of the Species.” Commenting on manners, morals, behaviour and good-breeding, they first appeared in the original incarnation of The Spectator (1711-12), founded by childhood friends Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, who earlier in 1709 also published Tatler.
Although this Spectator’s Little-Britain (the street address given for the paper), conservative values may feel outmoded to the modern reader, its place in history and contribution to the Enlightenment shouldn’t be overlooked. Its light touch made it accessible and popular with a burgeoning middle class and it was one of the first papers to make a conscious effort to appeal to women. It also made an impression on Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), who in his autobiography credited The Spectator with providing the model for his own style of writing and he reprinted several of its essays in the American colonies over fifty years after their initial publication.
The book in the photographs with illustrations by Chas. O. Murray dates from around 1889.
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Judging books by their cover
