Marie Corelli, once the most popular novelist in the English-speaking world, turned her formidable voice to the catastrophe of the First World War in this passionate collection of essays. Written in the turmoil of 1914-1918, these pieces reveal an author far removed from the romantic fantasies that made her famous: here is Corelli as angry prophet, interrogating the civilization that marched its sons into the mud of the trenches. She challenges patriotic fervor, questions what nation really means, and asks uncomfortable truths about women's roles in a conflict that promised glory but delivered slaughter. These are not the dispassionate reflections of a commentator; they are the urgent, sometimes furious dispatches of a woman who believed literature must serve conscience. For readers curious about how theEdwardian era understood its own apocalypse, this collection offers a窗口 into the mind of a writer who refused to tow the party line.
