"A thrilling, heart-moving story...'Ouida' is a brilliant novelist."

                                                       -- Chicago Tribune

"The most powerful novel that 'Ouida' has...written....[I]t has awakened in us a lively desire to revisit solitudes which we have always associated with sport and gloom, more especially now that heroes as Saturnino Mastarna are no longer to be met with save in the pages of novels."

                                                       -- The Times (London)

"Everyone read [Ouida].  Everyone was either scandalized or diverted: no one was bored."

                                                       -- New York Times

In the poverty-stricken, sweltering, desolate village of Maremma, in Tuscany, the robber-bandit Saturnino is a hero to the local peasants, but an embarrassment to the country's law enforcement. When at last he is captured, he begs Joconda, an old peasant woman, to care for his daughter. Joconda finds the orphan abandoned in a hut in the mountains, and the girl comes to be known as Musa.

Even as a young girl, Musa loves freedom, nature, the sea -- and death.  She frequently visits an ancient Etruscan tomb and is fascinated by the dead.  But when her adoptive mother and protector dies, Musa receives her first real taste of death and her attitudes begin to change.  She flees the horrible village and takes up residence among the tombs.

A child of incredible beauty, she will inspire love in a number of men, who will try to tame her wild spirit in one way or another.  But fiercely independent, Musa struggles to spurn their advances.  And one day her father Saturnino returns, seeking shelter with her -- will she discover the truth of her origins?  Can she possibly live as she hopes to do, alone among the tombs, or must she return to society and marry?

One of Ouida's most popular novels, In Maremma is an important and fascinating meditation on women's role in society, as well as a powerful and atmospheric modern gothic novel.

0-9777841-7-7, 480pp., $19.95

About the Author

Ouida (1839-1908) was born Marie Louise Ramé and took on the pen name "Ouida", which was how she, as an infant, pronounced her name "Louise."  She was the author of more than forty novels and stories for children and was an ardent animal rights activist.  Despite her great financial success, she spent her money recklessly and died in poverty in Italy.  Today she is best remembered for her novels Moths (1880) and In Maremma (1882). 

About the Editor

Natalie Schroeder is Associate Professor of English at the University of Mississippi, where she teaches courses in Victorian literature, Dickens, and women's literature.  She has previously edited Regina Maria Roche's Clermont for Valancourt Books and Ouida's Moths for Broadview Press.  She has also completed a full-length study of Ouida's fiction, set for publication in 2007.