Sensational, romantic, sentimental, and eccentric as her self-coined name "Ouida" would indicate, Marie Louise de la Ramée must surely have envisioned for herself a more prominent position among nineteenth-century writers. Thirty years after her death Ouida had become merely one in a series of "Eccentric Englishwomen" described by Rose Macaulay, who depicted the once-popular and wealthy author as "[a] fool; a grandiose and vanity-devoured egotist; a ridiculous writer; eccentric in (as Henry James put it) a common, little way." Although Ouida has been the subject of several biographies, one as recent as 1957, her works have not attracted serious critical attention. Indeed, anecdotes from her life survive more vividly than do characters, scenes, or even titles from her works. There are reports that in her young womanhood she entertained the dandified guardsmen who were so often her subjects at lavish dinners in the smoky atmosphere of which...