THE SOUL OF LILITH
Book Details + Condition: Richard Bentley and Son (London). Scarce First Edition, 1892. Three volumes, 8vo. Original blue pebble-grained cloth, title gilt to upper cover and spine, endpapers patterned with RBS monogram. Pagination: 288; 277; 243 with 30 pages of ads at rear. In Corelli’s novel, the doomed occultist El Rami comes across the body of a dead girl and attempts to use his arts to bring her back to life. He succeeds, but her body is a shell. He spends the rest of the novel trying to summon her soul back into the corpse, but the culmination of the novel (in which El Rami forces his affections on the unwilling body) cause it to fall into ash, and the sorcerer is crumbled for his hubris. Marie Corelli was the most popular fiction author of her day, outselling H.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle — by the thousands. She was Queen Victoria’s favorite author, and her works were collected by King Edward VII, the future King George V and by Winston and Randolph Churchill, amongst others. Her works continually revisit an attempt to reconcile Christianity with occultism and mysticism, such as reincarnation or astral projection. All three volumes show moderate shelf wear; wear at spine and board edges; with a slight lean to each book. Owner's name on half-title page of each volume; pages toned with intermittent foxing, otherwise free of markings. Also in each volume, on rear inside boards, half-envelopes pasted in.
