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
Occupation George Meredith
GM worked as a journalist for the Ipswich Journal, the Pall Mall Gazette, and the Morning Post (where he was editor from 1867 to 1868). He served as literary critic for the Westminister...
Publishing Jessie Fothergill
The copyright of the novel initially sold for £40 on 26 March 1877. Two months later, Richard Bentley and Son recognized its commercial possibilities and drew up a new contract, increasing the price to £200...
Reception Rosa Nouchette Carey
The Athenæum was lavish with faint praise. It likened Only the Governess to a tranquil backwater out of the main current of the turbid stream of modern fiction.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
3151 (1888): 337
Praising Carey for not...
Reception Wilkie Collins
The Woman in White, along with Ellen Wood 's East Lynne,1861, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon 's Lady Audley's Secret, 1862, established the massive popularity of the sensation novel, a genre marked by...
Textual Features Charlotte Chanter
Critic John Sutherland discerns the influence of Wilkie Collins on the novel's plot. Certainly the figure of the mysterious woman in black who aims to avenge herself on her husband's destroyers recalls the description of...
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...
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 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, 1979.
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 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 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.
qtd. in
Ellis, Stewart Marsh. Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu, and Others. Books for Libraries Press, 1931.
287
In fact CR had...
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
qtd. in
“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...

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