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Mighty Atom
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition.
- GenresFiction
192 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1896
76 people want to read
About the author
Marie Corelli
429 books184 followersMarie Corelli (born Mary Mackay) was a best-selling British novelist of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, whose controversial works of the time often label her as an early advocate of the New Age movement.
In the 1890’s Marie Corelli’s novels were eagerly devoured by millions in England, America and the colonies. Her readers ranged from Queen Victoria and Gladstone, to the poorest of shop girls. In all she wrote thirty books, the majority of which were phenomenal best sellers. Despite the fact that her novels were either ignored or belittled by the critics, at the height of her success she was the best selling and most highly paid author in England.
She was the daughter of poet, journalist, author, anthologist, novelist, and songwriter Charles Mackay. Her brother was the poet Eric Mackay.
In the 1890’s Marie Corelli’s novels were eagerly devoured by millions in England, America and the colonies. Her readers ranged from Queen Victoria and Gladstone, to the poorest of shop girls. In all she wrote thirty books, the majority of which were phenomenal best sellers. Despite the fact that her novels were either ignored or belittled by the critics, at the height of her success she was the best selling and most highly paid author in England.
She was the daughter of poet, journalist, author, anthologist, novelist, and songwriter Charles Mackay. Her brother was the poet Eric Mackay.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 15, 2020
This little-known fin de siècle novel proves surprisingly interesting despite its heavy didacticism. Corelli makes her intentions clear in her dedication to “those self-styled ‘progressivists’” who she accuses of “a worse crime than murder” for promoting “education without religion.” What follows is a story about a ten-year-old boy and the negative affects his strict education has on him. We are first introduced to Lionel at his studies where, distracted by a bird singing for just a moment, “He might have been a bank clerk, or an experienced accountant in a London merchant’s office from his serious old-fashioned manner” (6). We soon learn that his private tutor has been dismissed, in part, for his own beliefs in Christianity and his refusal to keep his beliefs from the boy. As he collects his last paycheck, the tutor tells Lionel’s father, “I will have no share in child murder” (26). Thus Corelli suggests that education without instruction in Christianity is a mortal danger.
What makes this novel so interesting is that its plot takes a detour from its message. While Corelli’s editorial interjections blatantly attribute Lionel’s problems—his fatigue, pre-mature aging, loneliness, and existential plight— to his lack of a Christian upbringing, the novel is written with strong characters and nuances that offer other likely causes, especially neglectful parenting. Like any decent novel, this one is open to various interpretations and in addition to (or in spite of) its religious objective it may also be read from feminist and ecocritical perspectives. Thus although intended as a religious social critique of public education, Corelli’s novel actually offers a stronger critique of patriarchal authority and its effects on future generations.
What makes this novel so interesting is that its plot takes a detour from its message. While Corelli’s editorial interjections blatantly attribute Lionel’s problems—his fatigue, pre-mature aging, loneliness, and existential plight— to his lack of a Christian upbringing, the novel is written with strong characters and nuances that offer other likely causes, especially neglectful parenting. Like any decent novel, this one is open to various interpretations and in addition to (or in spite of) its religious objective it may also be read from feminist and ecocritical perspectives. Thus although intended as a religious social critique of public education, Corelli’s novel actually offers a stronger critique of patriarchal authority and its effects on future generations.
August 14, 2011
Marie Corelli’s novel from 1896, “The Mighty Atom”, is an attempt by Corelli to show the evils of Atheism. Her dedication reads: “To those self-styled “progressivists,” who by precept and example assist the infamous cause of education without religion, and who by promoting the idea borrowed from French atheism, of denying to the children in board schools and elsewhere the knowledge and love of God as the true foundation of noble living are guilty of a worse crime than murder.”
Corelli then tells a very contrived tale of a sickly boy, Lionel, whose father (John Valliscourt, insists be taught a curriculum devoid of superstition (a.k.a. religion). There are two forces in the boy’s life, one is his father, the source of the entire push of atheism. His father’s influence extends to the boy’s mother as well as to the teachers who are responsible for his instruction. The other force is that of people who believe, which includes the boy’s first teacher Mr. Montrose, who is dismissed by his father due to lack of satisfactory progress in Lionel’s education; Mrs. Valliscourt, though she lacks the ability to stand up to her husband, and even the boy’s second teacher Professor Cadman-Gore softens in this area due to Lionel’s influence. However, it is the grave digger Mr. Reuben Dale and his daughter Jessamine that are the biggest influences in this area, as it is from them that he learns the most about religion.
The conversations between Mr. Dale, Jessamine and Lionel are among the most painful to read, as the author insists on trying to convey in misspelling how Jessamine (and her father) pronounce their words. Other parts of the book read very much like Corelli’s previous works as the characters are very two-dimensional, and other than the slight hint at change in Professor Cadman-Gore there is no character growth which has always been a problem with Corelli’s writing. The worst part of the story though is Corelli’s attempts at conveying what atheists actually believe. It is clear from the start that she has no idea how atheists think. It is also clear that she has no understanding of science, given the way she talks about “The Mighty Atom”, which she seems to think is science’s substitute for God.
When I started reading Corelli’s works, I was a bit more forgiving about her weaknesses as a writer, and though her characters have rarely shown growth in the course of the books, the earlier stories at least contained some interesting ideas. That seemed to change with “The Sorrow of Satan”, and I am sorry to say that this problem has continued with this novel as well. The only saving grace here is that “The Mighty Atom” is fairly short, but you will pretty much know the entire story within the first couple of chapters.
Corelli then tells a very contrived tale of a sickly boy, Lionel, whose father (John Valliscourt, insists be taught a curriculum devoid of superstition (a.k.a. religion). There are two forces in the boy’s life, one is his father, the source of the entire push of atheism. His father’s influence extends to the boy’s mother as well as to the teachers who are responsible for his instruction. The other force is that of people who believe, which includes the boy’s first teacher Mr. Montrose, who is dismissed by his father due to lack of satisfactory progress in Lionel’s education; Mrs. Valliscourt, though she lacks the ability to stand up to her husband, and even the boy’s second teacher Professor Cadman-Gore softens in this area due to Lionel’s influence. However, it is the grave digger Mr. Reuben Dale and his daughter Jessamine that are the biggest influences in this area, as it is from them that he learns the most about religion.
The conversations between Mr. Dale, Jessamine and Lionel are among the most painful to read, as the author insists on trying to convey in misspelling how Jessamine (and her father) pronounce their words. Other parts of the book read very much like Corelli’s previous works as the characters are very two-dimensional, and other than the slight hint at change in Professor Cadman-Gore there is no character growth which has always been a problem with Corelli’s writing. The worst part of the story though is Corelli’s attempts at conveying what atheists actually believe. It is clear from the start that she has no idea how atheists think. It is also clear that she has no understanding of science, given the way she talks about “The Mighty Atom”, which she seems to think is science’s substitute for God.
When I started reading Corelli’s works, I was a bit more forgiving about her weaknesses as a writer, and though her characters have rarely shown growth in the course of the books, the earlier stories at least contained some interesting ideas. That seemed to change with “The Sorrow of Satan”, and I am sorry to say that this problem has continued with this novel as well. The only saving grace here is that “The Mighty Atom” is fairly short, but you will pretty much know the entire story within the first couple of chapters.
July 12, 2015
I do normally really enjoy Marie Corelli's books. She was quite an odd lady with some rather odd ideas but I find her works very compelling. This however, was a very dull and disappointing one to read. It was also confusing, as it had one of the women characters give a lecture about how reading wasn't for women and she proudly stopped her daughter doing it. Which is odd when written by a woman, who was very popular with her female audience, and didn't want them to stop buying and reading her books! So not every character was speaking with the author's voice!
But the main part of this book seemed to be a reaction to an article Marie Corelli had read about boys being taught Atheism in schools in France and subsequently the number of suicides rising. So she wrote a book about how teaching boys (or a particular boy) atheism and not Christianity would lead him to kill himself. The problem was the boy, despite his father's best efforts, was not a rational atheist, but spent most of the book as Christian, and beliving in religious superstition. In the end the reason he killed himself had little to do with the atheist teaching, but the sadness over the death of his friend, and how little that seemed to mean to anyone, and the inability to reconcile his rational and religious beliefs. He seemed stuck on the idea that the universe was created by an "atom" and seemed to have no scientific grasp of anything.
Definitely not one of her works I'd recommend. I'm glad I didn't start reading her books with this one or I'd never have read any of the others!
But the main part of this book seemed to be a reaction to an article Marie Corelli had read about boys being taught Atheism in schools in France and subsequently the number of suicides rising. So she wrote a book about how teaching boys (or a particular boy) atheism and not Christianity would lead him to kill himself. The problem was the boy, despite his father's best efforts, was not a rational atheist, but spent most of the book as Christian, and beliving in religious superstition. In the end the reason he killed himself had little to do with the atheist teaching, but the sadness over the death of his friend, and how little that seemed to mean to anyone, and the inability to reconcile his rational and religious beliefs. He seemed stuck on the idea that the universe was created by an "atom" and seemed to have no scientific grasp of anything.
Definitely not one of her works I'd recommend. I'm glad I didn't start reading her books with this one or I'd never have read any of the others!
January 10, 2024
I found what appears to be a first edition of this book (two independent sellers identified their uncommon, similar cover items as such) in an antique mall. The title grabbed my attention, but it was the dedication that both made me laugh and intrigued me: 
THOSE SELF-STYLED ' PROGRESSIVISTS,'
WHO BY PRECEPT AND EXAMPLE
ASSIST THE INFAMOUS
CAUSE OF
EDUCATION WITHOUT RELIGION
AND WHO, BY PROMOTING THE IDEA, BORROWED FROM FRENCH ATHEISM, OF DENYING TO THE CHILDREN IN BOARD-SCHOOLS AND ELSEWHERE,
THE KNOWLEDGE AND LOVE OF GOD
AS THE TRUE FOUNDATION OF NOBLE
LIVING, ARE GUILTY
OF A WORSE CRIME THAN MURDER.”>
Apparently, Ms Corelli (pseudonym of Mary Mackey) was quite popular, and supposedly Queen Victoria’s favorite author. She writes of Lionel, “He might have been a bank clerk, or an experienced accountant in a London merchant’s office, from his serious old-fashioned manner, instead of a child barely eleven years of age”. Well, that child doesn’t sound like any ten year old (he later tells someone he’ll be "eleven next birthday”) as he says to his tutor,
“It’s all my stupidity I suppose, but sometimes it seems a muddle to me, and more often still it seems useless. How, for instance, can I feel any real interest in the amount of the tithes that were paid to certain bishops in England in the year 1054? I don’t care what was paid, and I’m sure I never shall care. It has nothing to do with the way people live nowadays, has it?”
I guess we’re to deduce that the extensive tutoring has made this child wild beyond his years. Or that’s just how late Victorian writers thought things should be. It’s not the first implausibility in this mess. She even acknowledges her contrivances with a weak attempt dismissal: “The Professor felt an odd chill as of cold water running down his back at the strange arguments of this child, whom he began to consider ‘uncanny.’ “
That tutor, Mr. Montrose, is let go by Lionel’s father because he “discovered to my extreme concern, that Mr. Montrose has not yet thrown off the shackles of superstitious legend and observance, and that in spite of the advance of science, he is really not much better than a savage in his ideas of the universe. He actually believes in Mumbo-Jumbo, — that is, God, — still! — and also in the immortality of the soul!”
And thus starts Ms. Corelli’s laying out her thesis. She disparages the Scot, Montrose, with the stereotypes of the time (money)… though her father was Scottish. And she hacks at what we understand to be uneducated dialects - that gets tiresome. She’s not unlike other authors who want to try to explain away rationality and despite the rich language, she’s simplistically transparent in her misguided myopathy (Think The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe).
She wasn’t above gratuitous promotion: “and immediately above him, quivering aloft among the sunbeams like a jewel suspended in mid-heaven, carolled a lark, with all that tender joyousness which has inspired one of the sweetest of our English poets”. That poet was her brother, and his work quite bad… only known because his sister forced it on readers.
“Clovelly’s a charming place, and the people are interesting, as being just in the transition-stage between primitive simplicity and modern cupidity.”
And she swings her cudgel hard near the end: “In the ‘Free-Thinker’s Catechism’ (Catechisme du Libre-Penseur), by one Edgar Monteil, — a code of ethics which has been circulated assiduously among children’s schools in France for the past ten years, — the unhappy little beings whose ideas of morality are engrafted upon this atheistical doctrine, are taught that “the passions of man are his surest and most faithful guides,” and that “God is a spectre invented by priests to frighten timid minds;” — this too, in utter and wicked oblivion of the grand truth proclaimed with such a grand simplicity— “God is Love!” “As the soul,” writes the self-deluded compiler of the ‘Free-Thinker’s Catechism,’ “no longer constitutes for us an independent and imperishable individuality, there is no future life.”
And, “Woe betide those who crush the high aspirations of innocent and hopeful youth by the deadening blow of Materialism! Worse than murderers are they, and as a greater crime than murder shall they answer for it!”
But then there is this: “Yet every anti-Christian author nowadays has his or her commendatory clique, and salvo of applause from the press, and the more blasphemous, vulgar and obscene the work, the louder the huzzas. ”
Sad, how off the mark she was because now, even more than then, it is the opposite.
So, given the theme, the ending was easily anticipate. And as to the theme, we are to understand that atheism begets cruelty. Not, oh no, that cruelty exists regardless of any or no religion, nor that religion (particularly one of the flavors is actually responsible for more cruelty and hatred than before it existed) is not blameless. And she wants us to believe that “No reasonable father ‘loves’ his children” is solely due to an absence of religion - not because the father is … a callous ass.
So, other than the fake-non-colloquial vernacular, the language is rich, if the writing and story are not. Still, she had value in working to save Shakespearean buildings and I did like this: “It’s always silly, I think, to accuse somebody else of being in a temper when you’re in one yourself.”
THOSE SELF-STYLED ' PROGRESSIVISTS,'WHO BY PRECEPT AND EXAMPLE
ASSIST THE INFAMOUS
CAUSE OF
EDUCATION WITHOUT RELIGION
AND WHO, BY PROMOTING THE IDEA, BORROWED FROM FRENCH ATHEISM, OF DENYING TO THE CHILDREN IN BOARD-SCHOOLS AND ELSEWHERE,
THE KNOWLEDGE AND LOVE OF GOD
AS THE TRUE FOUNDATION OF NOBLE
LIVING, ARE GUILTY
OF A WORSE CRIME THAN MURDER.”>
Apparently, Ms Corelli (pseudonym of Mary Mackey) was quite popular, and supposedly Queen Victoria’s favorite author. She writes of Lionel, “He might have been a bank clerk, or an experienced accountant in a London merchant’s office, from his serious old-fashioned manner, instead of a child barely eleven years of age”. Well, that child doesn’t sound like any ten year old (he later tells someone he’ll be "eleven next birthday”) as he says to his tutor,
“It’s all my stupidity I suppose, but sometimes it seems a muddle to me, and more often still it seems useless. How, for instance, can I feel any real interest in the amount of the tithes that were paid to certain bishops in England in the year 1054? I don’t care what was paid, and I’m sure I never shall care. It has nothing to do with the way people live nowadays, has it?”
I guess we’re to deduce that the extensive tutoring has made this child wild beyond his years. Or that’s just how late Victorian writers thought things should be. It’s not the first implausibility in this mess. She even acknowledges her contrivances with a weak attempt dismissal: “The Professor felt an odd chill as of cold water running down his back at the strange arguments of this child, whom he began to consider ‘uncanny.’ “
That tutor, Mr. Montrose, is let go by Lionel’s father because he “discovered to my extreme concern, that Mr. Montrose has not yet thrown off the shackles of superstitious legend and observance, and that in spite of the advance of science, he is really not much better than a savage in his ideas of the universe. He actually believes in Mumbo-Jumbo, — that is, God, — still! — and also in the immortality of the soul!”
And thus starts Ms. Corelli’s laying out her thesis. She disparages the Scot, Montrose, with the stereotypes of the time (money)… though her father was Scottish. And she hacks at what we understand to be uneducated dialects - that gets tiresome. She’s not unlike other authors who want to try to explain away rationality and despite the rich language, she’s simplistically transparent in her misguided myopathy (Think The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe).
She wasn’t above gratuitous promotion: “and immediately above him, quivering aloft among the sunbeams like a jewel suspended in mid-heaven, carolled a lark, with all that tender joyousness which has inspired one of the sweetest of our English poets”. That poet was her brother, and his work quite bad… only known because his sister forced it on readers.
“Clovelly’s a charming place, and the people are interesting, as being just in the transition-stage between primitive simplicity and modern cupidity.”
And she swings her cudgel hard near the end: “In the ‘Free-Thinker’s Catechism’ (Catechisme du Libre-Penseur), by one Edgar Monteil, — a code of ethics which has been circulated assiduously among children’s schools in France for the past ten years, — the unhappy little beings whose ideas of morality are engrafted upon this atheistical doctrine, are taught that “the passions of man are his surest and most faithful guides,” and that “God is a spectre invented by priests to frighten timid minds;” — this too, in utter and wicked oblivion of the grand truth proclaimed with such a grand simplicity— “God is Love!” “As the soul,” writes the self-deluded compiler of the ‘Free-Thinker’s Catechism,’ “no longer constitutes for us an independent and imperishable individuality, there is no future life.”
And, “Woe betide those who crush the high aspirations of innocent and hopeful youth by the deadening blow of Materialism! Worse than murderers are they, and as a greater crime than murder shall they answer for it!”
But then there is this: “Yet every anti-Christian author nowadays has his or her commendatory clique, and salvo of applause from the press, and the more blasphemous, vulgar and obscene the work, the louder the huzzas. ”
Sad, how off the mark she was because now, even more than then, it is the opposite.
So, given the theme, the ending was easily anticipate. And as to the theme, we are to understand that atheism begets cruelty. Not, oh no, that cruelty exists regardless of any or no religion, nor that religion (particularly one of the flavors is actually responsible for more cruelty and hatred than before it existed) is not blameless. And she wants us to believe that “No reasonable father ‘loves’ his children” is solely due to an absence of religion - not because the father is … a callous ass.
So, other than the fake-non-colloquial vernacular, the language is rich, if the writing and story are not. Still, she had value in working to save Shakespearean buildings and I did like this: “It’s always silly, I think, to accuse somebody else of being in a temper when you’re in one yourself.”
October 28, 2021
I couldn't finish the book, the story seemed to be an excuse to paint an extremely black and white picture of believing in God VS not believing in it. The characters are all very unsubtle, one is the image of innocence, the other of tyranny, etc. I couldn't get into it. I'm not giving it one star only just because I haven't read it until the end but I'd give it half a star if I were being honest.
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