Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Ouida
-
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.
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...
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.
The Saturday Review called Once and Again a great advance upon any previous effort of the writer's.
Kirk, John Foster, and S. Austin Allibone, editors. A Supplement to Allibone’s Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors. J. B. Lippincott.
The young Vernon Lee
praised this novel enthusiastically in an Italian article published in La Rivista in October...
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...
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...
Leisure and Society
Berta Ruck
BR
was a keen theatre-goer. She cried unashamedly at a revival of one of the stage versions of Ouida
's Under Two Flags.
Ruck, Berta. An Asset to Wales. Hutchinson.
160
Intertextuality and Influence
John Strange Winter
While in reminiscence JSW
was uncertain as to the title of this early composition, she acknowledged the influence on it of Ouida
and Whyte Melville
. She sent the story to the journal Wedding Bells...
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.
In this book Richardson's heroine Miriam, now eighteen years old, has returned from Germany and is a resident teacher at Wordsworth House, a school in fictional Banbury Park, North London, run by the Perne...
Intertextuality and Influence
Berta Ruck
BR
relates with gusto a story about the composition of a novel with a particularly implausible romance story-line. Wishing she could defy verisimilitude as confidently as Ouida
(who could get away with murder and murdered...
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Taylor
Paul Bailey opens his introduction by quoting extensively from a scene in Ethel M. Dell
's The Top of the World which features a Proud Beauty and a Faithful Retainer. He also links Angel with...
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.
