Marie Corelli was the pseudonym used by Mary Mackay (1855-1924), an English novelist who enjoyed a period of great literary success from the publication of her first novel in 1886 until the time of WWI. Sales of her novels exceeded the combined sales of popular contemporaries, including Arthur Conan Doyle, H G Wells and Rudyard Kipling, although she faced criticism from the literary elite for her overly melodramatic style. She was the biological daughter of Scottish poet and songwriter Dr Charles Mackay, born to his servant, Elizabeth Mills. Aged 11 she was sent to a Parisian convent to further her education, returning in 1870 to embark on a career as a musician giving piano recitals. She later turned to writing and her first novel, A Romance of Two Worlds, was an immediate success. The novel references the contemporary debate between creationism and evolution, incorporating Corelli's futuristic insights including ideas about electricity, solar power, and the properties of the atom, and the work combines supernatural themes with these elements of science fiction. Many readers believed the novel to be autobiographical, an idea that Corelli encouraged. The character of Heliobas appears in two other of Corelli's novels, Ardath (1889) and The Soul of Lilith (1892), and a recurring theme in her work is her attempt to reconcile Christianity with reincarnation, astral projection, and other mystical ideas.