'Ouida, ' the pseudonym of Louise Ram (1839-1908), was one of the most productive, widely-circulated and adapted of Victorian popular novelists, with a readership that ranged from Vernon Lee, Oscar Wilde and Ruskin to the nameless newspaper readers and subscribers to lending libraries. Examining the range and variety of Ouida's literary output, which includes journalism as well as fiction, reveals her to be both a literary seismometer, sensitive...