Corelli (born Mary Mackay, 1855-1924) was an English novelist and mystic. She enjoyed a period of great literary success from the publication of her first novel A Romance of Two Worlds in 1886 until the First World War. At one time sales of her novels exceeded the combined sales of her popular contemporaries including Arthur Conan Doyle, H G Wells and Rudyard Kipling, although critics often derided her work as "the favourite of the common multitude". A recurring theme in Corelli's books is her attempt to reconcile Christianity with reincarnation, astral projection and other mystical ideas. One of her later works, this novel was first published in 1923.