Ouida (Louise de la Ramée), English Victorian Novelist

By Taylor Jasmine | On December 24, 2024 | Comments (0)

Louise de la Ramée, (known by her pen name of Ouida; January 1, 1839 – January 25, 1908) was an English novelist of French extraction. Born in Bury St. Edmunds, England in 1840, her nom de plume was supposedly suggested by a young sister’s efforts to pronounce “Louise.”

The best-known of her many works are A Dog of Flanders, a children’s book that has been adapted to film numerous times, and Under the Flag. She wrote more than forty novels, plus many short stories and children’s books. She also contributed numerous articles and essays to magazines and journals.

Her novels dealt with all phases of European society, some of her themes being treated with cleverness and skill, often with cynical railing at the weaknesses of her characters.

Her early stories were extravagantly romantic, but she shed her passionate exuberance and became a stronger writer, though inclined to the reckless and tragic. For the last thirty years of her life she made her home in Italy, where scenes in many of her novels were set. (adapted from The New Student’s Reference Work, Chicago: F.E. Compton and Co., 1914)

The following has been adapted from De la Ramée, Marie Louise,” in Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement, London: Smith, Elder, & Co. (1912) in 3 vols.

Ouida (1839 – 1908), born Marie Louise de la Ramée in Bury St. Edmunds, was the daughter of Louis Ramé and Susan Sutton. She owed her education to her father, a teacher of French whose intellectual power was exceptional. At an early age, she expanded her surname of Ramé into de la Ramée.

Though not a lot is known about her early life, a girlhood diary from April 1850 to May 1853 showcases her precocity, love of reading, and eagerness to learn. She visited Boulogne with her parents in 1850, and accompanied them to London in 1851 to see the Great Exhibition.

Slightly built, fair, with an oval face, she had large dark blue eyes and golden brown hair. A portrait in red chalk, drawn in September 1904 by Visconde Giorgio de Moraes Sarmento, was presented by the artist to the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 1908. He offered another drawing, also created in her declining years, to the Moyses Hall Museum, Bury St. Edmunds.

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The beginnings of a literary career

Ouida began her literary career under Harrison Ainsworth’s auspices, publishing a short story titled “Dashwood’s Drag or, the Derby and What Came of It” (1859) in the New Monthly Magazine.

Ainsworth, convinced of her ability, accepted and published by the end of 1860 seventeen tales by her, none of which she reprinted, although they brought her into notice. Like her later novels they dealt with dubious phases of military and fashionable life.

Her first long novel, Granville de Vigne, appeared in the same magazine in 1863. Tinsley published it in three volumes, changing the title with her consent to Held in Bondage. On the title page, Miss de la Ramée first adopted the pseudonym of “Ouida,” by which she was ever after known as a writer.

Strathmore followed in 1865, and Idalia, written when she was sixteen, in 1867. Strathmore was parodied as Strapmore! a romance by “Weeder” in Punch by Sir Francis Burnand in 1878. Ouida’s vogue was assisted by Lord Strangford’s attack on her novels in the Pall Mall Gazette.

An exceptionally prolific writer in several genres

Ouida’s books were constantly reprinted in cheap editions, and some were translated into French, or Italian, or Hungarian.

Many of her later essays in the Fortnightly Review, the Nineteenth Century, and the North American Review were republished in Views and Opinions (1895) and Critical Studies (1900). There she proclaimed her hostility to woman suffrage and vivisection, or proved her critical insight into English, French, and Italian literature. Her uncompleted last novel, Helianthus (1908), was published after her death.

An 1893 opera by G. A. à Beckett and H. A. Rudall was based on her novel Signa (1875). The light opera Muguette by Carré and Hartmann on Two Little Wooden Shoes. Plays based on Moths were produced at the Globe Theatre in March, 1883; as were those adapted from Under Two Flags, to much success.

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Settling in Italy

In 1874 Ouida settled permanently with her mother in Florence, and pursued her work as a novelist. At first she rented an apartment at the Palazzo Vagnonville. Later, she moved to the Villa Farinola at Scandicci, three miles from Florence, where she lived in grand style, entertained lavishly, collected objets d’art, dressed expensively (but not always tastefully), drove good horses, and kept many dogs, to which she was deeply attached.

In The Massarenes (1897) she painted a lurid picture of the parvenu millionaire in smart London society. Ouida prized this book, but it failed to capture the public, and her popularity waned. Thereafter she chiefly wrote essays on social questions or literary criticisms for the leading magazines for scant remuneration.

Animal rights advocacy

Ouida’s affection for animals arose from her horror of injustice. Her faith in all humanitarian causes was earnest and sincere. She was an animal rights advocate and staunchly anti-vivisectionist She was also against hunting and the fur trade. One of her nonfiction books was The New Priesthood: A Protest against Vivisection (1897). She also wrote articles against animal experiments for periodicals of the day.

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A decline in fortune, and a lost legacy

Impractical, and not scrupulous in money matters, Ouida went into debt when her literary profits declined. She gradually fell into acute poverty. Her mother, who died in 1893, was buried in the Allori cemetery at Florence as a pauper. From 1894 to 1904, Ouida lived in a state often bordering on destitution, at the Villa Massoni, at Sant Alessio near Lucca.

From 1904 to 1908 she made her home at Via-reggio, where a peasant woman looked after her. Ouida’s tenement was shared with dogs that she brought in from the street.

Ouida had an artificial and affected manner, and although amiable to her friends was rude to strangers. Cynical, petulant, and prejudiced, she was quick at repartee. She was fond of painting, for which she believed she had more talent than for writing, and she was in the habit of making gifts of her sketches to her friends throughout her life.

She knew little firsthand of the Bohemians or of the wealthy men and women who were the subjects of her chief dramatis personæ. She described love like a precocious schoolgirl, and with an exuberance which, if it arrested the attention of young readers, moved the amusement of their elders.Yet, she wrote of the Italian peasants with knowledge and sympathy and of dogs with admirable fidelity.

Major works & more information

Ouida published dozens of works of fiction, both as novels and volumes of collected short stories. She was almost unreasonably prolific! Here is her complete bibliography. A number of her works were adapted to early film. Some of the most popular of her works were:

• Held in Bondage (1863, 1870, 1900)
• Strathmore (1865)
• Idalia (1867)
• Under Two Flags (1867)
• Tricotrin (1869)
• Puck (1870)
• A Dog of Flanders and other Stories (1872)
• Two Little Wooden Shoes (1874)
• Moths (1880)
• Bimbi, Stories for Children (1882)

More information about Ouida (Louise de la Ramée)

• Download several Ouida books (Emory University)
• Ouida’s works on Project Gutenberg
• Victorian Web
• Ouida on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books
• Listen to several books online at Librivox.org

Categories: Author biography