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.
After this she completed her education at home. Although even in this context she says, I was not well educated, for I never would learn,
Bainton, George, editor. The Art of Authorship. J. Clarke.
24
she also described herself as having always been from...
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...
Textual Production
Oscar Wilde
Wilde shifted the magazine's focus from fashion and transformed it into an organ for women's opinions and feelings on the subjects of modern life, art, and literature, as well as style. He was also dedicated...
Education
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Perhaps most important for Ella, however, was her mother
's influence and guidance, and the reading of every magazine she could lay her hands on, together with works by Ouida
, Mary J. Holmes
...
Education
Dorothy Whipple
As a small child DW
loved the Bible. She had a child's bible with illustrations, and was fascinated by stories of Christ's miracles (though a blind man took it badly when she proposed spitting...
Textual Features
Mary Webb
Critics have called Dormer Old House itself the protagonist of this novel; its description fills the opening chapter. Like the country house in MW
's previous book, it takes a gothic colouring from the unhappiness...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Doreen Wallace
DW
does not write as a promoter. To her the Fens as a whole—including the Norfolk marsh-land—are dismally uninspiring from a scenic point of view.
Wallace, Doreen. East Anglia. Batsford.
71
She has no romantic illusions about pastoral life:...
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...
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...
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
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...
Characters
Naomi Royde-Smith
The heroine (played by Thea Holme
) is an inexperienced, romantic, good-natured shop-girl living in the London suburbs, engaged to a good but prosaic man and suffering the harrassment and anxiety of poverty: she has...
Intertextuality and Influence
Dorothy Richardson
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...
Textual Features
Jean Plaidy
The Carr novels present perhaps JP
's heaviest concentration of plot-elements which would have been familiar to Eliza Haywood
, Penelope Aubin
, Ouida
, and a host of popular fictioneers of every century and...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ouida,. A Village Commune. 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. Books for Libraries Press, 1970.
Ouida,. Chandos. Chapman and Hall, 1866.
Ouida,. Critical Studies. T. Fisher Unwin, 1900.
Ouida,. Folle-Farine. Chapman and Hall, 1871.
Ouida,. Held in Bondage. Tinsley, 1863.
Ouida,. Helianthus. Macmillan, 1908.
Ouida,. Idalia. Chapman and Hall, 1867.
Ouida,. Moths. Chatto and Windus, 1880.
Ouida,. Moths. Chatto and Windus, 1895.
Ouida,. Pascarèl. Chapman and Hall, 1873.
Ouida,. Strathmore. Chapman and Hall, 1865.
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.
Ouida, and Olivia Manning. Under Two Flags. Anthony Blond, 1967.