De la Ramée, Marie Louise (1839 - 1908)

Title

Mlle. Marie Louise de la Ramée

Author

De la Ramée, Marie Louise (1839 - 1908)

Pseudonym

Ouida

Date of Birth

1 January 1839 – 25 January 1908

Place of origin

Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Country of origin

England, United Kingdom

Language

English

Profession

Novelist

Short story writer

Children author

Essayist

Biographical details

Maria Louise Ramé was born at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, England. Her mother, Susan Sutton, was a wine merchant's daughter; her father was from France. She derived her pen name from her own childish pronunciation of her given name "Louise". For many years Ouida lived in London, but in about 1871 she moved to Italy. In 1874, she settled permanently with her mother in Florence, and there long pursued her work as a novelist. At first, she rented an apartment at the Palazzo Vagnonville. Later she removed to the Villa Farinola at Scandicci, south of Bellosguardo, three miles from Florence. She lived in Bagni di Lucca for a period, where there is a commemorative plaque on an outside wall. She declared that she never received from her publishers more than £1600 for any one novel, but that she found America "a mine of wealth". In “The Massarenes” (1897) she gave a lurid picture of the parvenu millionaire in smart London society. This book was greatly prized by Ouida, and was very successful in terms of sales. Thenceforth she chiefly wrote for the leading magazines essays on social questions or literary criticisms, which were not remunerative. As before, she used her locations as inspiration for the setting and characters in her novels. The British and American colony in Florence was satirized in her novel, “Friendship” (1878). She continued to live in Italy until her death on 25 January 1908, at 70 Via Zanardelli, Viareggio, of pneumonia. She is buried in the English Cemetery in Bagni di Lucca, Italy.

During her career, Ouida wrote more than forty novels, children's books, and collections of short stories and essays. Her work had several phases. In 1863, when she was 24, she published her first novel, "Held in Bondage". In her early period, her novels were considered "racy" and "swashbuckling", a contrast to "the moralistic prose of early Victorian literature" (Tom Steele), and a hybrid of the sensationalism of the 1860s and the proto-adventure novels being published as part of the romanticisation of imperial expansion. Later her work was more typical of historical romance, though she never stopped commenting on contemporary society. She also wrote several stories for children.
The British composer Frederic Hymen Cowen and his librettists Gilbert Arthur à Beckett, H. A. Rudall, and Frederic Edward Weatherly acquired the rights to Ouida's 1875 novel “Signa” to create an opera for Richard D'Oyly Carte's Royal English Opera House to succeed Arthur Sullivan's Ivanhoe in 1891. Between Cowen not being ready with his work and the collapse of Carte's venture, Cowen eventually took his finished opera “Signa” to Italy with an Italian translation of the original English text by G.A. Mazzucato. After many delays and production troubles, Cowen's “Signa” was first performed in a reduced three-act version at the Teatro Dal Verme, Milan on 12 November 1893. After further revision and much cutting, it was later given in a two-act version at Covent Garden, London on 30 June 1894, at which point Cowen wondered if there was any sense left in the opera at all. Ouida's impression of the work is unknown. Later, Pietro Mascagni bought the rights for her story "Two Little Wooden Shoes", intending to adapt it for an opera. His friend Giacomo Puccini became interested in the story and began a court action, claiming that because Ouida was in debt, the rights to her works should be put up for public auction to raise funds for creditors. He won the court challenge and persuaded his publisher Ricordi to bid for the story. After Ricordi won, Puccini lost interest and never composed the opera. Mascagni later composed one based on the story, under the title “Lodoletta”.

Selected publications

Paolo and Francesca

Link to external sources

Ouida - Wikipedia