Politician and orator Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899) once confessed in 1894 that Ouida was the world’s “greatest living novelist.” Praise from a man who outsold Oscar Wilde on the lecture circuit was not insignificant. Had I been alive during that time, I would have echoed his sentiments. It is heartening to discover, then, that Ouida’s name appears in at least a smattering of novels from the last years of her life to the point when her readership truly started to disappear in the West. In some cases (as noted in my post on her literary legacy), Ouida’s name is mentioned as an affirmation of a personal fondness for the author’s work. Cleary, this is the case with her appearance in the writing of Van Vechten and Richardson. In other instances, such as in Merrick’s Quaint Companions (1903) and Tillman’s turn of the century novella, her memory is evoked as a device to convey information about the characters being described. Here is a short list of some of the more notable mentions in fiction:
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