The Sorrows of Satan

Geoffrey Tempest is a starving London writer whose luck turns overnight when a vast inheritance falls into his lap on the very evening he meets the magnetic Prince Lucio Rimanez. The prince opens every door for him, money, fame, a society marriage, yet Tempest never suspects that his generous friend is the Devil himself, wearily working his ruin. Marie Corelli borrows the old Faust bargain to attack the greed, snobbery, and literary hypocrisy of the 1890s, and gives her Satan a strange melancholy: every soul that refuses him brings him nearer to the heaven he lost. Wildly popular on publication in 1895, it was one of the first true global bestsellers. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.