A poignant exploration of love, loss, and the passage of time, imbued with a melancholic beauty that mirrors the author’s own reckoning with mortality and the changing tides of literature.

This collection of short stories was released just before Corelli’s death, and is unlike any of her other tales. Corelli was the bestselling queen of Victorian romantic fiction, beloved by the public and Queen Victoria herself… but the Great War (WWI) war changed everyone, Corelli included.

Gone are the grand romances filled with passion and heartache. In their place are war-torn lives, dangerous naivety, espionage, and the savage gladness that many women felt at their husbands being called to the front.

Written in a fractured post-war society, the tales weave together the threads of a bygone era—a time of grand passions and unshakable ideals—with the stark realities of a modern world grappling with disillusionment and grief. Corelli’s signature lyrical prose takes on a deeper, more introspective tone, as her characters navigate the fragile boundaries between memory and reality, hope and despair. Each tale explores an irresolvable conflict, an impossible situation in which one or both players are incapable of reaching across the divide that seperates them.

We find a miner in America, upbraiding a missionary for his naivety; a haunting tune that leads the listener across windswept moors on a barren Scottish island; a wealthy American businesswoman, scorning the patriarchy of an English gent; and a monk, hiding an act of shame that fills his every waking moment, desperately trying to find someone to blame other than himself.

The Love of Long Ago is a bittersweet farewell from a literary icon, offering readers a glimpse into the soul of an artist who witnessed the end of an era and the dawn of a new, uncertain age. A timeless meditation on love’s enduring power, this novel is both a tribute to the past and a poignant reflection on the fleeting nature of life itself.

Marie Corelli