Moufflon

Moufflon is a short story by Ouida, the pen name of Maria Louise Ramé (1839-1908), the English novelist whose enormous popular output dominated late Victorian English popular fiction across the 1860s through the 1890s. Ouida wrote more than forty novels and many short stories across her career, with her work translated into many European languages and reaching a notable international audience.

Moufflon is one of Ouida’s most famous shorter pieces, set in rural Italy where Ouida lived for much of the second half of her life. The story takes its title from a dog and addresses the bond between an Italian peasant boy and his beloved animal. The treatment is sentimental in the late Victorian mode but the central emotional situation has major power, and the story has been frequently anthologized in collections of dog stories and Italian-themed fiction.

Ouida’s broader output included Under Two Flags of 1867, A Dog of Flanders of 1872, and many other commercially successful novels and stories. Her work was widely read in Britain, America, and continental Europe across her long career.