Ouida

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Standard Name: Ouida
Birth Name: Marie Louise Ramé
Self-constructed Name: Louise de la Ramée
Pseudonym: Ouida
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ouida published 44 volumes of fiction, primarily novels, but also novellas and short stories for both children and adults. Often publishing more than one book a year, she was also a prolific essayist who wrote on matters of politics and literature. Her first, three-decker novels, from the 1860s, often centred on the adventures of military men and were characterized as sensation novels. After she moved to Italy in the early 1870s, she wrote a number of novels concerned with the conditions of the government and population (especially the poor) of that country.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Jane Francesca Lady Wilde
In London JFLW associated with writers such as Marie Corelli , Ouida , and Violet Hunt . Oscar , an emerging celebrity, introduced his mother to the city's artistic circle.
Literary responses Mary Elizabeth Braddon
In 1951 Canadian novelist Robertson Davies made this book the centre of a fictional anecdote: a distinguished professor bequeaths to his grand-daughter a box of battered old books (Lady Audley's Secret, Mrs Henry Wood
Literary responses Florence Dixie
FD received many letters of appreciation from individual readers: from a sailor on a British warship and a soldier with the army in South Africa, as well as from Ouida and Marie Corelli , to...
Family and Intimate relationships Ella Hepworth Dixon
EHD 's father, a Yorkshireman named William Hepworth Dixon , was the editor of the Athenæum from 1853 to 1869 and wrote several novels. He was lionized by London society after the publication of...
Education Elaine Feinstein
Her MA followed automatically three years after her Cambridge BA. She achieved her Part I bar finals in London, but dropped the idea of practising law when she understood how much money she would...
Textual Production Elaine Feinstein
EF has carried out a great deal of scholarly commentary of a kind best calculated to be useful to readers (though she did not finish her MA thesis on nineteenth-century sexual fantasists like Ouida and...
Education Stella Gibbons
SG learned to read fairly late, but then read voraciously. The glowing Eastern landscapes and brilliant figures
qtd. in
Oliver, Reggie. Out of the Woodshed: A Portrait of Stella Gibbons. Bloomsbury, 1998.
20
of Disraeli 's Alroy and Thomas Moore 's Lalla Rookh made a particular impression. She also developed...
Textual Production Stella Gibbons
The novel concerns a foundling raised by a widow and a spinster who run a grocery shop in Bruges. It was probably influenced by Ouida 's Two Little Wooden Shoes.
Oliver, Reggie. Out of the Woodshed: A Portrait of Stella Gibbons. Bloomsbury, 1998.
219
Intertextuality and Influence Stella Gibbons
SG published Ticky, a fantasy novel inspired by Ouida .
Oliver, Reggie. Out of the Woodshed: A Portrait of Stella Gibbons. Bloomsbury, 1998.
20-1
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Author summary Stella Gibbons
SG was a gifted comic writer whose lively, parodic first novel, Cold Comfort Farm, was such a success that it has tended to eclipse her later achievements. Much of her writing was inspired by...
Publishing Sarah Grand
SG 's use of the phrase New Woman in The New Aspect of the Woman Question (an essay in the North American Review, part of an exchange with Ouida ) has been claimed by...
Intertextuality and Influence John Oliver Hobbes
Pearl Richards (later JOH ) read widely as a child and adolescent, and her parents' liberal views (and considerable fortune) meant that she could pursue her tastes in both the lending libraries and the less...
Literary responses John Oliver Hobbes
More recently, Margaret Maison characterised The School For Saints as a strange mixture of Disraeli , Hardy , Ouida , and Meredith . . . and there are even echoes of the old bigamy novels...
Literary responses Jean Ingelow
The Athenæum remarked that in spite of many faults in construction, we had seldom read a more charming novel of the domestic kind.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2355 (1872): 765
The review mentioned that JI seemed to live in...
Textual Production Henry James
Although HJ is best remembered as a novelist, he was also a prolific and insightful critic of literature and the arts. Over the course of his career he reviewed many novels by British women writers...

Timeline

4 November 1836: Richard Bentley (1794-1871) signed an agreement...

Writing climate item

4 November 1836

Richard Bentley (1794-1871) signed an agreement with Dickens to edit his new monthly periodical, Bentley's Miscellany.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Richard Bentley, 1794-1871
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.

December 1868: With sales of the once-popular Bentley's...

Writing climate item

December 1868

With sales of the once-popular Bentley's Miscellany at an all-time low, the owner, Richard Bentley , ended its publication.
Houghton, Walter E., and Jean Harris Slingerland, editors. The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900. University of Toronto Press, 1966–1989, 5 vols.
4: 12-13, 113

17 November 1958: The sale began at Sotheby's of the collection...

Writing climate item

17 November 1958

The sale began at Sotheby's of the collection of first editions built up by the bibliographer Michael Sadleir , who had recently died.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
(18 November 1958): 12

Texts

Ouida, and Enrico Mazzanti. A Dog of Flanders. Chapman and Hall, 1872.
Ouida,. A Dog of Flanders. L. C. Page.
Ouida,. A Village Commune. Chatto and Windus, 1881, 2 vols.
Ouida,. A Village Commune. New edition, Chatto and Windus, 1882.
Ouida,. Bimbi. Chatto and Windus, 1882.
Ouida,. Bimbi. J. B. Lippincott, 1907.
Ouida,. Cecil Castlemaine’s Gage. Chapman and Hall, 1867.
Ouida,. Cecil Castlemaine’s Gage. Reprint of 1877 edition, Books for Libraries Press, 1970.
Ouida,. Chandos. Chapman and Hall, 1866, 3 vols.
Ouida,. Critical Studies. T. Fisher Unwin, 1900.
Ouida,. Folle-Farine. Chapman and Hall, 1871, 3 vols.
Ouida,. Held in Bondage. Tinsley, 1863, 3 vols.
Ouida,. Helianthus. Macmillan, 1908.
Ouida,. Idalia. Chapman and Hall, 1867, 3 vols.
Ouida,. Moths. Chatto and Windus, 1880, 3 vols.
Ouida,. Moths. New edition, Chatto and Windus, 1895.
Ouida,. Pascarèl. Chapman and Hall, 1873, 3 vols.
Ouida,. Strathmore. Chapman and Hall, 1865, 3 vols.
Ouida,. The Massarenes. Sampson Low, 1897.
Ouida,. The New Priesthood. E. W. Allen, 1893.
Ouida,. Two Little Wooden Shoes. Chapman and Hall, 1874.
Ouida,. Under Two Flags. Chapman and Hall, 1867, 3 vols.
Ouida, and Olivia Manning. Under Two Flags. Anthony Blond, 1967.
Ouida,. Views and Opinions. Methuen, 1895.