Marie Corelli (1855-1924) was a British novelist popular from the publication of her first novel in 1886 until World War I. Corelli"s novels sold more copies than the combined sales of popular contemporaries, including Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, and Rudyard Kipling. Critics derided her work as "the favourite of the common multitude," but she was Queen Victoria"s favourite writer.