The Maid of the Mountains, called in its original score a musical play, is an operetta or "Edwardian" musical comedy in three acts. The music was by Harold Fraser-Simson, with additional music by James W. Tate, lyrics by Harry Graham and additional lyrics by Frank Clifford Harris and Valentine, and the book was written by Frederick Lonsdale, best known for his later society comedies such as On Approval. After an initial try-out at the Prince's Theatre in Manchester on 23 December 1916, the show was rewritten and opened at Daly's Theatre in London on 10 February 1917.

Edwardian musical comedy was a form of British musical theatre that extended beyond the reign of King Edward VII in both directions, beginning in the early 1890s, when the Gilbert and Sullivan operas' dominance had ended, until the rise of the American musicals by Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart, George Gershwin and Cole Porter following the First World War.