Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Ellen Wood
-
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.
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...
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...
Occupation
Naomi Jacob
After the First World War she became a performer herself, a character woman. She relates an anecdote of foiling an attempt to get her services for nine pounds a week when she had been...
Literary responses
Anne Marsh
In 1851 the Athenæum reviewer of Ravenscliffe still thought of The Admiral's Daughter as having heralded a remarkable addition to the phalanx of English authoresses.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
1255 (1851): 1198
The preface writer for the cheap reprint...
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...
Education
Elma Napier
In spite of the fact that her family did not value literature as much as games, and that her mother had specific ideas about what girls should read, EN
devoured every book she could get...
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...
Literary responses
Ouida
In a Book Buyer article of January 1897, American novelist and short story writer Stephen Crane
called this novel Ouida's Masterpiece and a song of the brave. He particularly liked the character Cigarette, a figure...
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.
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 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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mrs Showes
This conclusion strikingly anticipates that of Ellen Wood
's East Lynne: it is not, however, known that Wood ever read Statira.
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...
Family and Intimate relationships
Hesba Stretton
HS
had a close relationship with Charles Wood
, son of the writer Ellen Wood
(better known as Mrs Henry Wood).
Cutt, Margaret Nancy. Ministering Angels: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Writing for Children. Five Owls Press.
126-7
Family and Intimate relationships
Annie S. Swan
Annie later said that her mother, Euphemia Brown, was wise, practical, and common-sensical. Although proud of Annie's writing, she felt that domestic training was still essential for her, as for all her daughters.
Black, Helen C. Pen, Pencil, Baton and Mask: Biographical Sketches. Spottiswoode.
