Ouida

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Photograph of Ouida from 1874

Ouida , actually Maria Louise [de la] Ramée , sometimes in the spelling Oui´da , (born  January 1, 1839 in Bury St Edmunds , Suffolk, England , † January 25, 1908 in Viareggio , Italy ) was a British writer .

biography

Maria Louise Ramée was born in Bury St. Edmunds, England. She was the daughter of a French father and an English mother. Ramée took her author's pseudonym , Ouida , on the basis of her own incorrect pronunciation of her first name “Louise” from the days of her early childhood. She wrote the following opinion about her place of birth:

“That clean, quiet antiquated town, that always puts me in the mind of an old maid dressed for a party; that lowest and dreariest of Boroughs, where the streets are as full of grass as an acre of pasture land. Why, the inhabitants are driven to ringing their own doorbells, read they rust from lack of use. "

“This clean, silent, ancient city that always puts me in the state of mind of a solemnly dressed old maid; this is the least and monosyllabic of the communities, where the grass sprouts in the streets like an acre of pastureland. The residents are encouraged to ring their own door bells so that they do not rust due to lack of use. "

In 1867 Ramée moved to London to the Langham Hotel. There she began to write texts in an environment of comfort: while writing, she always lay in bed in her darkened room, surrounded by candlelight and colorful flower decorations. In addition to the steadily rising hotel and flower bills, she also led a number of evening parties during this time , which were attended by soldiers, politicians, well-known writers (including Oscar Wilde , Algernon Swinburne , Robert Browning and Wilkie Collins ) and artists (including John Everett Millais ). Many of her stories and characters were based on real people she met at these events in the hotel. William Allingham described Ramée in his diary of 1872 as a short person, with a “dark, intelligent face” and a voice that resembled a “sharp knife”.

Ramée lived in London for several years before moving to Italy in 1871 . In 1874 she settled with her mother in Florence to continue her work as a writer. First, she rented an apartment at Palazzo Vagnonville. She later moved to the Villa Farinola in Scandicci (south of Bellosguardo , three miles from Florence), where she preferred a luxurious and lavish lifestyle: in addition to expensive upscale clothing, she collected art objects, rode expensive horses and kept large numbers on dogs. The writer herself stated that she never received more than £ 1,600 from her publishers for a novel, but considered America to be a "mine of prosperity".

In her novel The Massarenes (1897), she portrayed the nouveau riche millionaires of the upper class London society in an extremely negative light. The book itself was strongly touted by the author and achieved high sales. Occasionally she also worked for magazines in Italy, but this was not particularly profitable for her. Inspired by where they lived, Ramées' subsequent works were therefore mostly Italian. With their satirical novel Friendship (1878), the Anglo-American society of Florence was formally ridiculed. Ramée described herself as an extremely serious artist. She was particularly inspired by George Gordon Byron and showed interest in all other areas of the arts in addition to writing. Emotional depictions of tragic artists therefore shaped her later novels. Furthermore, elements of romanticism and social criticism often mixed in their works. For example, in her novel Puck, a talking dog tells his views of contemporary society. In the anthology Views and Opinions , she discussed her own views on various social issues. Ramée was an animal lover and was an active advocate for animal rights. At times she was the owner of more than thirty dogs.

As a private person, Ramée was generally known for not being able to handle her money. Although she had earned a not inconsiderable sum from the sale of her books, she always spent this money without accumulating any reserves, so that she was the recipient of a small pension of only £ 150 per year and died impoverished in Viareggio of pneumonia in early 1908 .

Ramée was buried in the English cemetery in Bagni di Lucca . In the town, a plaque commemorates the writer who resided in the city for a while during her lifetime.

Literary style and cultural influences

In total, Ouida had written more than 40 novels, children's books, and collections of short stories and essays during her career. Their work was divided into several different phases.

In 1863, at the age of twenty-four, Ouida published her first novel, Hero in Bondage , declaring that she wrote her relatively acclaimed novel Idalia (published in 1867) at the age of sixteen.

In their early stages, Ouida's works were often viewed as antithetical to the "morally influenced prose of early Victorian literature" and were seen as the forerunners of the adventure novels published in the 1860s in the wake of the romanticization of imperial expansion. Later on, her works showed more traits of historical romances, although Ouida never stopped commenting on contemporary society in various writings. She also wrote several children's books.

Under two flags and moths are her most characteristic works. For example, the American author Jack London named Ouida's novel Signa , which he read at the age of eight, as one of the eight reasons for his own literary success.

Several of her works have been adapted as theater performances and film adaptations. Your title A Dog of Flanders was filmed in 1975 under the Japanese title Flanders no Inu as a 52-part anime series. This series belongs to the WMT series and was known in Germany under the title Niklaas, a boy from Flanders .

Works

Picture gallery

  • Ouida (Maria Louise Ramé)

  • Cabinet- sized portrait

  • Ouida monument

  • Ouida's tomb

Web links

Commons : Ouida  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cecil Castlemaine's Gage: And Other Novelettes . Chatto & Windus, 1899, p. 351.
  2. ↑ Ouida . In: Guide to The Langham Hotel . langhamhotels.com. Retrieved May 26, 2016.
  3. ^ Cosmopolis History of The Langham . Retrieved May 27, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Ouida
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ramée, Maria Louise de la (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1839
PLACE OF BIRTH Bury St Edmunds , Suffolk, England
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 1908
Place of death Viareggio , Italy