Mackay, Eric, 1851-1898

British poet Eric Mackay (1851-1898) was the son of journalist and poet Charles Mackay (1812-1889) and the half-brother of novelist Mary Mackay (1855-1924), who published under the pseudonym Marie Corelli. He published several books of poetry in both England and in America, including Love Letters of a Violinist (1886), A Lover's Litanies (1888) and Song of the Sea (1895), as well as a volume of his father's poetry, Gossamer and Snowdrift: The Posthumous Poems of Charles Mackay (1890).

Mackay also produced an unauthorized play based on Corelli's novel The Sorrows of Satan, which was a commercial failure. In the final year of his life, Mackay allegedly claimed that he was the true author of Corelli's successful novels. After his death, Corelli circulated a pamphlet refuting his claim of authorship of her work.

"Mackay, Mary." British Short-Fiction Writers, 1880-1914: The Romantic Tradition. Ed. William F. Naufftus. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 156. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995. (reproduced in Literature Resource Center). http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/LitRC (accessed September 14, 2010). Mullin, Katherine. "Mackay, Mary." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2009. www.oxforddnb.com (accessed September 14, 2010).