Innocent

A girl raised on a farm as a foundling discovers on her guardian's death that she has no name and no claim to anything, goes to London, and becomes a famous novelist under a pseudonym — and the man she loves does not know either fact. Corelli outsold Wells, Kipling and Conan Doyle combined and was Queen Victoria's favourite; this 1914 novel is her most autobiographical, which is saying something. Fifty-six plates by painters including Stanhope Forbes and Walter Sickert follow the farmyards, evening fields and street scenes that echo the foundling girl's passage from country innocence to London fame.