ABSTRACT
In my first book, on Ouida, Braddon and Broughton, I was determined to address these understudied authors with the same seriousness of purpose and method with which I might have approached Dickens – or Milton. Just how problematic that commitment still was in 1997 was brought home to me the year the book came out, when I interviewed for a position (not the one I currently hold) at a flagship state university. ‘You have written on several of these women authors’, observed one bemused potential colleague, ‘But can you teach Dickens?’ Not long after, a group of women scholars in the process of assembling a collection on nineteenthcentury women and feminism sent out a call for proposals. I responded, pointing out that it would be interesting to have Ouida in the mix, as she had voiced some strong opinions on women’s rights. As they were not familiar with Ouida, I quoted some of those opinions. The editors were politely horrified. Ouida was not at all what they had in mind. And they were right; though their description of the volume had initially failed to convey it to me, their purpose was really to assemble essays on women who were themselves politically and actively feminist. Ouida, though she was one of ‘these women authors,’ was evidently not one of those women authors.
