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The Byron Journal
Byronic Authority in Petticoats: Marie Corelli’s Improvisations on Byron’s Themes
Abstract
Though her name has almost sunk into oblivion, Marie Corelli was by far the best-selling author of the end of the Victorian Era. All through Corelli’s production, from 1886 to her death, she rewrites the typical Byronic romance and endorses a Byronic perception of poetry and of the poet. Corelli shaped her own auctorial identity and authority by playing on Byronic patterns, but beyond her obvious tributes to the Byronic hero or to Byron as a hero, she emphasises the importance of the feminine power of salvation, thus presenting a chance of redemption to Byron’s doomed characters.