Now a century old, Marie Corelli's very odd novel seems to have been largely a vehicle for her numerous manias and quarrels with the modern world particularly with the critics and intellectuals who regularly put down her books' in print, although the public swallowed them whole. The Devil - yes, the Devil in person goes about tempting people in all areas of English life, in quest of someone strong enough morally to withstand him and the rectitudinous writer Mavis Claret was widely a to be an idealised portrait of Corelli herself. Although the writing is frequently as humourless and absurd as that of Amanda McKittrick Ros, Marie Corelli (Minnie Mackay in private life) was no bad hand at telling a story however preposterous.