Twin souls, twin pens: Charles Mackay, Marie Corelli, and the authorship of <i>The Twin Soul</i> (1887)

This article investigates the ambiguous authorship of the 1887 novel The Twin Soul, originally published anonymously and later attributed to the writer Charles Mackay, adoptive father of bestselling novelist Marie Corelli. Drawing on archival research, textual analysis, and corpus stylistics, it explores the possibility of Corelli’s creative involvement in the work. The study situates Twin Soul within the broader context of nineteenth-century publishing practices, attentive to the prospect of familial literary collaboration towards the end of Mackay’s life and early on in Corelli’s own novelistic career. It examines the novel’s thematic and stylistic parallels with Corelli’s known works as well as its divergence from Mackay’s established oeuvre, also considering the implications of anonymous publication, gendered assumptions in literary criticism, and the role of digital humanities in attribution studies. Ultimately, the authors propose that while Mackay is likely the text’s primary author, there is evidence of collaboration between Mackay and Corelli, with financial pressures and publishing circumstances likely driving this joint effort. This interdisciplinary enquiry not only sheds light on a neglected text, suggesting its significance in future scholarship on Corelli, but also challenges conventional understandings of authorship and literary legacy in the Victorian period.<p></p>