Description

Description: English novelist Mary Mackay (1855-1924), known by the pseudonym Marie Corelli penned and signed this kind letter in 1908. She writes that though she is flattered to have been asked to open an Arts and Crafts Exhibition, she is “unable to accept it, as I have for many reasons which would take too long to explain, given up all public functions of this kind.”

Corelli published her first novel, A Romance of Two Worlds in 1886 and enjoyed immense literary success during her lifetime, though she is largely forgotten today. Her novels outsold the combined sales of her contemporaries, Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, and Rudyard Kipling, and her work was collected by Winston Churchill and the British Royal Family. Written on three pages of a sheet of “Mason Croft, Stratford-on-Avon” imprinted stationery folded to: 8″ x 5″. Item #A01173

Condition: Fold line, light creases, otherwise very good condition with a large, clear signature.