The Sorrows of Satan (1895) is Marie Corelli’s highest grossing novel and considered by some to be the first bestselling novel to exist (Federico 7). In the first week of publication, it sold twenty-five thousand copies and after seven weeks it sold fifty thousand (Federico 7; Feltes 123). The Sorrows of Satan follows the journey of Geoffrey Tempest. Geoffrey is, at first, a down on his luck literary critic who is struggling to pay the rent for his flat when he suddenly inherits a huge fortune from a distant uncle whom he vaguely remembers meeting once as a youth. At the outset, the plot seems akin to that of a society novel — a genre that was popular with the Victorians. However, the novel quickly reveals itself to be Faustian in concept, with the introduction...
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Citation: Rogers, Justin. "The Sorrows of Satan". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 January 2026 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10894, accessed 09 June 2026.]
