Ellen Wood

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Standard Name: Wood, Ellen
Birth Name: Ellen Price
Married Name: Mrs Henry Wood
Pseudonym: Johnny Ludlow
Pseudonym: Ensign Thomas Pepper
In a writing career spanning most of the second half of the nineteenth century, EW produced a prodigious body of work (often writing two triple-deckers per year), including sketches, novels, and a series of interconnected Johnny Ludlow tales involving a character of that name, that were published over a twenty-year period. While much of her fiction takes the form of moralistic domestic dramas, EW could also be fascinated by the grotesque, and many of her works have sensational and supernatural themes. Her reputation today rests almost exclusively on the phenomenally popular East Lynne, 1861, possibly the best seller among novels of the Victorian period and the only one of her works that has remained generally available.
Photo of a painting of Ellen Wood by Sydney Hodges. Wood is seated on a red chair gazing straight at the viewer. Her left hand holds a book; she is wearing a blue dress with lace trim around the sleeves and neck, and a lighter blue bow around the collar. Her cap has a broad, sheer ribbon running down from it. She wears a necklace, and a ring on her right index finger. A window behind her opens on a mountain landscape.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Wealth and Poverty Rhoda Broughton
RB , who published almost exclusively with Bentley throughout her career, preferred to receive a lump sum for her novels rather than to rely on royalites and copyright earnings. In her reminiscence Ethel Arnold suggests...
Wealth and Poverty Mary Elizabeth Braddon
She left a remarkably large estate for a Victorian woman writer. Despite the high style in which she lived, she was reportedly able from early in her career to save her literary earnings, since money...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Edith J. Simcox
EJS could be unreservedly critical in her reviews: she deemed Mary Elizabeth Braddonanother victim to the diseased appetite of the class that would rather read half-a-dozen bad novels than one good one, and...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Sarah Tytler
Clearly delighted with the opportunity to mix in literary circles, ST recorded her personal observations of these authors in Men and Women Met by the Way, the final 100-page-long section of her family autobiography...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Eva Figes
She considers the drama of ancient Greece and of the Renaissance, setting each in its historical context. After dealing with issues of religious belief, kingship, and the dead, she comes to that of women and...
Textual Production Charlotte Riddell
Furniss quoted with relish her allegedly low opinion of Ellen Wood , as simply a brute, she throws in bits of religion to slip her fodder down the public throat.
Ellis, Stewart Marsh. Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu, and Others. Books for Libraries Press.
287
In fact CR had...
Textual Production Dorothy L. Sayers
Between 1928 and 1934, DLS edited three volumes under the series title Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror. Her introductions to these collections offered a scholarly history of the genre of detective...
Textual Production Isa Craig
Its inaugural issues included several signed articles by her. She also enlisted contributions from Bessie Rayner Parkes , including an article she had previously published in the English Woman's Journal. IC also arranged for...
Textual Production May Crommelin
MC was a regular contributor to The Idler.
“May Crommelin (Maria Henriette de la Cherois-Crommelin) (1849 - 1930)”. Crommelin Family, The Netherlands.
On 30 January 1895 (as Over the Andes, from Argentine to Chile and Peru began the serialization that ran all year) she contributed A Water Horse...
Textual Production Victoria Cross
In 1915 films of VC 's novels Five Nights and Paula were produced in Britain. Cross stated that she had prepared and practically produced
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
197
the former, although Charlotte Mitchell notes that the records do...
Textual Production John Strange Winter
According to Janet Todd , JSW was the owner, editor, and publisher of Winter's Weekly. While Winter certainly acted as editor, it is unclear to what degree she was the periodical's publisher or owner...
Textual Features Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Critic Robert Lee Wolff sees MEB in her novels of the 1870s as satirizing the hypocrisy of middle-class Low-church values while seeming to espouse them,
Wolff, Robert Lee. Sensational Victorian. Garland.
241
in part because she was trying to compete with...
Textual Features Charlotte Mary Brame
With its presentation of Vivian as both sinful and saintly, Beyond Pardon gives CMB scope for comment on social attitudes to woman and propriety. When Vivian leaves England with Lord Rydal, the scandal is viewed...
Textual Features Caroline Norton
The volume for 1834 had plates and paintings by Mrs Robertson , William Daniell , and Sir Thomas Lawrence . Typical subjects for illustrations were, as in other periodicals, portraits of aristocratic beauties and scenes...
Textual Features Dorothy L. Sayers
Here she mounts a powerful appreciation of the novel, both for its importance in the development of the detective story (all the clues, she says, are clearly conveyed to the reader, something which seldom happened...

Timeline

1823: William Huskisson, as MP for Liverpool and...

Building item

1823

William Huskisson , as MP for Liverpool and President of the Board of Trade , secured the equalization of customs duties in Britain and Ireland, a big step on the road towards free trade.

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.

April 1863: Henry Mansel in the Quarterly Review attacked...

Writing climate item

April 1863

Henry Mansel in the Quarterly Review attacked sensation novels as preaching to the nerves and as indications of a wide-spread corruption, of which they are in part both the effect and the cause; called into...

December 1865: Alexander Strahan launched The Argosy, a...

Writing climate item

December 1865

Alexander Strahan launched The Argosy, a monthly literary and travel magazine, with Isa Craig as its first editor, and Charles Reade 's Griffith Gaunt as its lead serial.

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.

1874: Mary Cecil Hay published Old Myddleton's...

Women writers item

1874

Mary Cecil Hay published Old Myddleton's Money, an early detective story combining sensation fiction with small-town satire.

1898: The publishing firm of Richard Bentley and...

Writing climate item

1898

The publishing firm of Richard Bentley and Son , dating from 1 September 1832, was sold for eight thousand pounds to Macmillan .

1920: The number of Miners' Institutes (which included...

Writing climate item

1920

The number of Miners' Institutes (which included Miners' Libraries ) increased following the decision regularly to supplement the levy financing them from the national Miners' Welfare Fund .

Texts

Wood, Ellen. A Life’s Secret. Charles W. Wood, 1867.
Palmer, T. A., and Ellen Wood. “Appendix J: Extracts from T. A. Palmer’s adaptation of <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>East Lynne</span&gt”;. East Lynne, edited by Andrew Maunder and Andrew Maunder, Broadview, 2000, pp. 741-76.
Wood, Ellen. Ashley, and Other Stories. R. Bentley and Sons, 1897.
Wood, Ellen. Danesbury House. Scottish Temperance League, 1860.
Wood, Ellen. East Lynne. R. Bentley, 1861.
Wood, Ellen. Edina. R. Bentley, 1876.
Wood, Ellen. Edina. R. Bentley and Son, 1889.
Wood, Ellen. Elster’s Folly. Tinsley Brothers, 1866.
Wood, Ellen. “Introduction”. East Lynne, edited by Andrew Maunder, Broadview, 2000, pp. 9-38.
Wood, Ellen. Johnny Ludlow. R. Bentley, 1874.
Wood, Ellen. Johnny Ludlow, Second Series. R. Bentley and Son, 1889.
Wood, Ellen. Lady Grace, and Other Stories. R. Bentley and Son, 1887.
Wood, Ellen. Mildred Arkell. Tinsley, 1865.
Wood, Ellen. Mrs. Halliburton’s Troubles. R. Bentley, 1862.
Wood, Ellen. Roland Yorke. R. Bentley, 1869.
Wood, Ellen. “Seven Years in the Wedded Life of a Roman Catholic”. The New Monthly Magazine, Vol.
91
, pp. 245-55.
Wood, Ellen. St. Martin’s Eve. Tinsley, 1866.
Craig, Isa et al., editors. The Argosy. R. Bentley and Son.
Wood, Ellen. The Channings. Ward, Lock.
Wood, Ellen. The Channings. R. Bentley, 1862.
Wood, Ellen. The Shadow of Ashlydyat. R. Bentley, 1863.
Wood, Ellen. Verner’s Pride. B. Tauchnitz, 1863.