Now Barabbas was a rotter: The extraordinary life of Marie Corelli

by Brian Masters

Very good condition

326 pages, Hardcover

First published January 12, 1978

About the author

Brian Masters is a British writer best known for his biographies of mass murderers, including Killing for Company, on Dennis Nilsen; The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer; She Must Have Known, on Rosemary West; and The Evil That Men Do. He has also written about the British aristocracy and worked as a translator.

Reviews

[Micaela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I normally don't believe in "rating" nonfiction, but having read other biographies and studies of Corelli for my MA thesis, I have to say that I was disappointed in Masters' often cruel and patronizing attitude toward Corelli's person. Corelli was a complicated figure: she was quick to anger and slow to forgive; she was vain and fraudulent; and she picked fights where there needn't have been any at all (The Silver Domino, anyone?). There are many valid criticisms to make of Corelli, and there are ways to offer them without participating in the mean-spirited bashing she often endured at the hands of the contemporary British press. This is to say, it's very clear that Masters views Corelli as an insipid, ugly little woman (and he does use those words here and there).

This is not to discount Masters' work, which was informative for me when I needed it. However, if you are interested in learning more about Corelli I encourage you to look into Teresa Ransom's The Mysterious Marie Corelli and/or Annette Federico's Idol of Suburbia.

[Morten Rubjerg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marie Corelli, one of Queen Victoria's favourite authors, wrote, often fantastic and religiously inspired, romances about angelic heroines that could very well look like idealized versions of herself. All but forgotten now, she was a bestseller writer, a bit like a Stephen King in her own day.

Brian Masters, in this masterly (pun intended) biography traces her life and writings in minute detail, with a sometimes sarcastic but never unfeeling flair. Her snobbery and pretentions are laid painfully open, but at the same time there's an awareness of the hardships of a woman making her own way in the 19.th century England.

Corelli, no doubt, was an inspiration for many characters of the social satires of E. F. Benson, of whom Masters (prolly no coincidence) has also written a biography. Benson through years kept a scrapbook devoted to her and her foibles, clearly drawing upon her deeds when conjuring up the follies of Queen Lucia, Miss Mapp, Mrs. Ames, Susan Leg, and many others. As Brian Masters remarks somewhere, this leaves us with one of the rare bad tastes in the mouth about "Fred" Benson, as Corelli clearly thought of him as a friend and didn't suspect how he was snickering about her behind her back. On the other hand, it's hard to blame him...

One chapter in "Barabbas" traces how Corelli, always an abject and sincere adorer of Shakespeare, moved to Stratford-Upon-Avon and got herself entangled in a legal squabble about a monument she bulldozed over the town in spite of local people's protests. The whole incident, including its denoument of every drop of worked-up passion fizzing into the sand, could very well in itself have served as the plot of another of Benson's social satires.