ABSTRACT
Given the use of the past tense that suggests it is a dialogue of the dead, 'Cleopatra and Mrs. Humphry Ward' was probably written sometime after the death of Mary Augusta Ward in 1920, following that of Marie Corelli in 1924. A bemused shriek – is audible in Cleopatra's response to Ward's proud assertion of conventional moral rectitude and her disavowal of religious doubt as the unfortunate product of youthful impetuosity. Mary Augusta Ward was the daughter of Matthew Arnold's brother Thomas and a popular novelist known for her religious and moral earnestness. The History of David Grieve examines the value of marriage as an institution. The Sorrows of Satan, one of the greatest best-sellers of the time, is a Faustian novel that traces the fall and redemption of a starving writer named Geoffrey Tempest who is befriended by the devil incarnate as a foreign aristocrat.
