Although she strove to conceal her origins through numerous fictions, Corelli was born Mary (or Minnie) Mackay in Perth, Scotland, in 1855, the natural daughter of Dr. Charles Mackay, a minor literary figure who married her mother, a servant, in 1864.

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While in her twenties, she pursued a brief career as a concert pianist and assumed the fantastic, self-created persona of Marie Corelli, "a true Italian" descended from the seventeenth-century Venetian composer Arcangelo Corelli. Subsequently, she turned to the more lucrative venture of writing fiction.

Her first novel, A Romance of Two Worlds (1886), combines science fiction and occultism in examining such disparate notions as out-of-body time travel, moral didacticism, and "personal electricity." After the moderate success of this initial venture, she produced, among other works, the best sellers The Soul of Lilith (1892), Barabbas, a Dream of the World's Tragedy (1893), and The Sorrows of Satan (1895). Initial sales of the latter work surpassed those of any English novel previously published, and, in all, fifteen of her nearly thirty novels had sales in excess of 100,000 copies.

Her novels brought her extravagant wealth and fame; simultaneously, her melodramatic plots, purple prose, anachronistic and ill-informed use of antique or biblical settings and characters, and idées fixes (for example, Christian moralism, pseudo-science, and attacks on society women and the literary establishment) made her the target of critical ridicule, to which she publicly and self-righteously responded.

As a result, Corelli was the most publicized British author of the 1890s, overshadowing even Oscar Wilde. Her fame was ephemeral, however, and she fell from public popularity before her death, in 1924, in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Although Marie Corelli has been represented as a feminist or lesbian author, both definitions are highly problematic. Her novels, generally variations on the standard heterosexual romance plot, are frequently polemics against marriage and male dominance, and Corelli firmly believed in the essential spiritual superiority of women over the base carnality of men.

She was an outspoken foe of women's suffrage, however, and denounced women with political and professional aspirations as both unwomanly and unladylike.

From 1876 until her death, she lived with Bertha Vyver, who served as companion, confidant, housekeeper, and nurse. Corelli wore a ring Vyver had given her when both were young, and the entwined initials of the two women, who themselves appeared in public with their arms around each other, were carved into the mantelpiece of their home with the inscription amor vincit.

Whether their relationship went beyond romantic friendship, however, is unclear. Corelli publicly inveighed against "sex feelings" and maintained a close friendship with Henry Labouchere, author of the amendment to the Criminal Law Act of 1885 by which Wilde was convicted and imprisoned. (Corelli proclaimed that she would have "that Douglas man [Wilde's lover Lord Alfred Douglas] soundly whipped.")

Ironically, Marie Corelli's most significant contribution to gay and lesbian culture is an unwitting one, that of a camp figure. In the early stages of their respective careers, Wilde derived amusement from the flamboyance of her writing (he wrote, "you certainly tell of marvellous things in a marvellous way") and advised her in the art of self-promotion.

Additionally, the meddlesome and imperious Corelli, who was given to reciting imaginative historical "facts" and dispensing phrases in skewed French and Italian, provided E. F. Benson, an occasional visitor to her home, with the perfect model for the protagonist of his Lucia novels.

Most of Corelli's novels are currently in print, their author having achieved something of a cult status since the 1960s. The Romance of Two Worlds remains a perennial favorite in occult bookstores.

It is impossible to understand twentieth-century lesbian literature without recognizing the significance of butch-femme relationships.

Combining elements of incongruity, theatricality, and exaggeration, camp is a form of humor that helps homosexuals cope with a hostile environment.

From its beginning, the nineteenth century in England had a purposeful homosexual literature of considerable bulk, both male and female, though it was fettered by oppression.

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, intimate, exclusive, and often erotic romantic friendships between women were largely perceived as normal and socially acceptable.

Born of an elite Victorian family, E. F. Benson was a prolific, often campy, writer of biographies, autobiographies, and novels, many of which were informed by homoeroticism.

Arcangelo Corelli, who was probably homosexual, was one of the seventeenth century's most widely admired composers and performers.

The Labouchère Amendment criminalized all sexual contact between men in Great Britain in 1885 and remained on the books until 1967.

Oscar Wilde is important both as an accomplished writer and as a symbolic figure who exemplified a way of being homosexual at a pivotal moment in the emergence of gay consciousness.