Ouida (1839–1908)

Marie Louise de la Ramée was born to a French father and an English mother. Her pen name of "Ouida" (WEE-da) was derived from a childish mispronunciation of the name Louise. Educated in Paris, she settled in London in 1857 and began her literary career by contributing stories to periodicals such as The New Monthly and Bentley's Magazine. After her early success with the popular novels Held in Bondage (1863) and Strathmore (1865), Ouida quickly became the best-selling British writer of witty, romantic novels such as Moths (1880) and Princess Napraxine (1884). In 1874, she went to live in Florence, and many of her books written after that had Italian settings. Despite their overheated plots and ridiculous heroes, her books were popular until the end of the century. She made a lot of money from her writing, but died in poverty.