Ouida (1839–1908,) pseudonym of Marie Louise de la Ramée, was an English novelist. The writer of over 40 novels, children’s books, and collections of short stories and essays was known for her over-elaborate melodramatic romances of fashionable life.
Born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, England, Ouida was the child of an English mother and a French father. She was educated in Paris, then settled in London in 1857. the pseudonym ‘Ouida’ derived from a childhood mispronunciation of ‘Louisa.’
Ouida started her career by contributing stories to magazines to Bentley’s Miscellany 1859–60 and other magazines. She found success with Held in Bondage (1863) followed by Strathmore (1865,) both aimed at the circulating libraries. She soon became a bestselling writer of “hothouse romances,” filled with liveliness and oomph. She was frequently derided for her opulent settings, incredible heroes, and improbable plots. Her popularity waned in the 1890s.
From 1860, Ouida spent much time in Italy, and, in 1874, she settled in Florence, where she lived lavishly. She wrote almost 50 books, mainly novels, such as Folle-Farine (1871) and A Village Commune (1881.)
Ouida also wrote animal stories, essays, and tales for children. Towards the end, her royalties dried up. She spent her last years destitute in Viareggio, Tuscany.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Ouida (Maria Louise Rame)
To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.
—Ouida (Maria Louise Rame)
Topics: Innocence
Sport inevitably creates deadness of feeling. No one could take pleasure in it who was sensitive to suffering; and therefore its pursuit by women is much more to be regretted than its pursuit by men, because women pursue much more violently and recklessly what they pursue at all.
—Ouida (Maria Louise Rame)
Topics: Sports
Take hope from the heart of man and you make him a beast of prey.
—Ouida (Maria Louise Rame)
Topics: Hope, Aspirations
Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness.
—Ouida (Maria Louise Rame)
Topics: Familiarity, Knowledge
In a few generations more, there will probably be no room at all allowed for animals on the earth: no need of them, no toleration of them. An immense agony will have then ceased, but with it there will also have passed away the last smile of the world’s youth.
—Ouida (Maria Louise Rame)
Topics: Animals
The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.
—Ouida (Maria Louise Rame)
Topics: Absence
Petty laws breed great crimes.
—Ouida (Maria Louise Rame)
Topics: Lawyers, Law
If all feeling for grace and beauty were not extinguished in the mass of mankind at the actual moment, such a method of locomotion as cycling could never have found acceptance; no man or woman with the slightest aesthetic sense could assume the ludicrous position necessary for it.
—Ouida (Maria Louise Rame)
A cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as they run.
—Ouida (Maria Louise Rame)
Topics: Gossip
The loss of our illusions is the only loss from which we never recover.
—Ouida (Maria Louise Rame)
Topics: Illusion
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