Ardath

A poet, burnt out and contemptuous of everything including himself, goes to a Chaldean monastery in the mountains and is sent back five thousand years to the city of Al-Kyris in its last night. Corelli outsold Wells, Kipling and Conan Doyle put together and was Queen Victoria's favourite; the critics loathed her, and this 1889 novel is her most ambitious — the dead self of the title is the poet's, and he meets it. Fifty-seven plates by painters including John Martin and Nicholas Roerich supply the mountain solitude and ruined cities this tale of a dead self demands.