First published in 1880, Moths addresses such Victorian taboos as adultery, domestic violence, and divorce in vivid and flamboyant prose. The beautiful young heroine, Vere Herbert, suffers at the hands of both her tyrannical mother and her dissipated husband, and is finally united with her beloved, a famous opera singer. Moths was Ouida’s most popular work, and its melodramatic plot, glamorous European settings, and controversial treatment of marriage make it an important, as well as a highly entertaining, example of the nineteenth-century “high society” novel.
This Broadview edition includes a critical introduction and a broad range of contextual documents, including contemporary reactions to Ouida’s fiction and a selection of nineteenth-century writings on marriage, feminism, and the aristocracy.