Ouida

Ouida, the pseudonym of the novelist LOUISE DE LA RAMÉE, who was born about 1840, and spent part of her girlhood with her mother at Bury St Edmunds. About 1874 she was living in London at the Langham, and since then Florence has been her chief abode. She was writing for Colburn's New Monthly and Bentley's Magazine as early as 1861; and among more than a score of novels by her may be mentioned Strathmore (1865), Idalita (1867), Under Two Flags (the best, 1868), Puck (1869), Folle Farine (1871), Pasearel (1873), Ariadne (1877), Moths (1880), Princess Naprazine (1884), Santa Barbara (1891), The Silver Christ (1894), Toxin (1895), The Massarenes (1897), and The Waters of Edera (1900). Muscular heathenry, nature-worship, and an encyclopaedic ignorance are prevailing notes of these books, which are clever but unreal. There is a dash and go about them, a 'glamour' and glitter, and withal a singular sameness—one wearies of their courtesans and blasé aristocrats, and ceases to be amused with their classical and cosmopolitan malapropisms.