This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: • This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. • A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. • The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. • When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Remapping Ouida: Her Works, Correspondence and Social Concerns A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature in the University of Edinburgh by Barbara Vrachnas University of Edinburgh 2 Declaration This is to certify that that the work contained within has been composed by me and is entirely my own work. No part of this thesis has been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. Signed: 3 Table of Contents List of Illustrations and Acronyms ................................................................................................. 4 Acknowledgments........................................................................................................................... 5 Permission from NYPL……….…………………………………………………….……………..6 Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... 7 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 8 Ouida and her Publishing Affairs ................................................................................................. 25 Strathmore and the Sensation Novel ............................................................................................ 72 Parody and Burnand’s STRAPMORE! ................................................................................ 104 Abuse, Mania and Confinement in Folle-Farine ....................................................................... 127 The Sense of Morality in Moths ................................................................................................. 164 Mythology and the Artist in In Maremma ................................................................................. 184 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 219 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................ 222 Appendix: Transcriptions of Ouida’s Correspondence in The Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations ... 246 4 List of Illustrations and Acronyms Illustration: Linley Sambourne's Caricature of Ouida in Punch , August 20, 1881, Page 83………………104 Acronyms: BQR British Quarterly Review CEJ Chambers's Edinburgh Journal FR Fortnightly Review PMG Pall Mall Gazette QR Quarterly Review SR Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 5 Acknowledgments My greatest gratitude extends to my supervisor Dr. Robert Irvine who has provided steady guidance and more than helpful and candid feedback throughout these past years. His support and patience has been utterly invaluable. I would also like to thank Dr. Malpas for his significant support at a time when it was much needed; Dr. Wild for his insights into Ouida’s writings and literary criticism surrounding her work and Mrs. Rebecca Filner for her excellent assistance during my visits to the New York Public Library. Finally, a wholehearted thank you to my parents, brother and sister-in-law, words really cannot express the love and support that they have given me, and to my one and only niece who could make me laugh when nobody else could. A huge thanks to all my friends especially to Sappho, who has put up with me as much as I have this past year, to my lifetime friend Melina for being with me in spirit and for uncannily moving to New York the same year I was planning to visit the NYPL and finally to Vasilis who has been the voice of reason in my head. 6 The New York Public Library Stephen A. Schwarzman Building Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, New York, New York 10018-2788 Aprii 7,2014 Barbara Vrachnas 12/3F1 Glen Street Tollcross EH3 9JF Edinburgh UNITED KINGDOM Dear Ms. Vrachnas, Your request of March 31, 2014, to publish quotations from a sélection of the letters of Ouida (Louise de la Rameé) housed in the Berg Collection and described in the accompanying list you have provided for publication in your doctoral dissertation for the Unversitty of Edinburgh is acceptable to the New York Public Library. The following credit lines should appear in connection with this material: The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature The New York Public Library Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations If possible, please send me a copy of your work upon publication. There is no publication ice l'or use of this material. Isaac Gewirtz, Ph.D. ( urator of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature 7 Abstract This thesis examines the popular and non-canonical Victorian novelist Ouida (Maria Louise de la Ramée) her relationship with her publishers and the reception of her works. In particular, through the study of published and unpublished correspondence, as well as nineteenth century periodicals, certain views concerning the writer and her oeuvre will be revised and amended, especially in the context of social and moral standards, anticipated from the female fictional character and the artist, the writer. The first chapter will concentrate on Ouida’s correspondence and will argue that the author’s reputation and sales were not only damaged by her ostensibly immoral plots but also as a result of her publishers’s differing priorities. In order to delineate the content of these ‘indecent’ novels and later the impact they had on reviewers, critics and readers, as well as Ouida’s writing, four of her three-decker novels have been selected for critical discussion. Strathmore (1865) is discussed in relation to sensation fiction and marriage law and Folle-Farine (1871) as an examination of inequality between classes and genders. Francis Cowley Burnand’s parody Strapmore (1878) is then read as a critical account of and response to Ouida’s ideologies. The thesis will then examine the controversy surrounding Moths (1880), and In Maremma (1882) will be read as a response to this controversy through its relation to mythology and the representation of the artist. The analysis of these novels and Ouida’s correspondence with her agent and publishers will trace the path that led to the gradual decline in her reputation and the posterior obscurity of her works. 8 Introduction “Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.” The Hand of Ethelberta , Thomas Hardy The core of this thesis will be Marie Louise de la Ramée, widely known by her pseudonym Ouida (1839 –1908), who was a popular, prolific and a distinctly peculiar Victorian author. Ouida published over forty novels, fifty short stories and thirty essays in her lifetime and apart from a writer she was also an animal activist and rescuer. She was born in Bury St. Edmunds, a town in Suffolk, England to an English mother and a French father. Her nom de plume ‘Ouida’ was the authoress’s infantile mispronunciation of her name Louisa. Ouida began publishing her work in her late teens, early twenties but became well-known in her thirties. Carol Poster writes in her article “Oxidization is a Feminist Issue: Acidity, Canonicity, and Popular Victorian Female Authors” that Ouida played a fundamental role in the lives and works of writers such as Oscar Wilde and Ronald Firbank, and the Dictionary of Literary Biography states that “she appealed to the likes of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Mrs. Henry Wood” (Poster, 1996: 287 and “Ouida”, 1995: 260). However, as it will discussed Ouida was also considered a very extravagant author and woman which affected her work and reputation failing thus to leave a lasting imprint on literature. In the second half of the nineteenth century Ouida was only one of the numerous commercially successful female writers of a similar calibre, such as Ellen Wood (1814–1887), 9 Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835–1915) and Rhoda Broughton (1840–1920). In his work A Victorian Publisher: A Study of the Bentley Papers , Royal A. Gettmann states that from 1865 to 1885 a three-decker novel was written either by Wood, Braddon, Broughton or Ouida (Gettmann, 1960: 249). A decade later, Henry Curwen’s study in A History of Bookseller: The Old and the New written in 1873 shows that in the 1871 clearance catalogue of one of the most prominent circulating libraries in the Victorian era, that of Charles Edward Mudie’s (1818–1890) “(and this catalogue is one of the best guides to the popular