55. Ouida — Moths

AMY: Hi everybody, and welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off great works of literature by forgotten women artists. I’m Amy Helmes…

KIM: And I’m Kim Askew. In this week’s episode, we’re excited to talk about a little-known Victorian-era novel by yet another once wildly popular writer. The British novelist, under her pen name, Ouida, wrote more than 40 novels as well as essays, short stories, and children’s books, and she hobnobbed with literary notables such as Robert Browning, Oscar Wilde, and Wilkie Collins. We’re going to be discussing her novel Moths today.

AMY: Some critics called Ouida’s “high society stories” depraved, and Willa Cather dubbed her work “mawkish” at best, but Oscar Wilde, who as we said, ran in the same circles, wrote that she had successfully captured “the tone and the temper” of the day. Meanwhile, critic and wit Max Beerbohm called her “one of the miracles of modern literature.” That’s pretty high praise.  Ouida, herself, was quite an eccentric…  even by our typical Lost Ladies of Lit standards, right Kim?

KIM: Yes, I would agree. Her story IS pretty fantastic, or fantastical, and so is Moths. Though some call it a Victorian-era Harlequin novel, I feel like Moths is maybe more of a cross between Harlequin and Proust. I’ll try and back up that bold assertion for you later in the episode. But anyway, among other interesting things, Moths tackles the topic of divorce in an unusual way for that time period. There’s obviously a lot to talk about here! I can’t wait, so let’s raid the stacks and get started! 

[intro] 

AMY: Okay, so let’s begin this episode by giving our listeners just some background on our author, whose pen name, as we said, was Ouida. (That’s O-U-I-D-A). She was born Maria Louise Ramé (although she preferred the more fabulous Marie Louise de la Ramée, which is fitting when you learn more about her.) and ‘Ouida’ actually comes from her infant mispronunciation of her name ‘Louisa,’ which is kind of cute, I think.

KIM: I think so, too. It’s adorable when you know what it actually means.

AMY: Yeah. Anyway, she was born in 1839 in Suffolk, England. Her mother, Susan, was a wine merchant’s daughter and her father was from France, but he wasn’t around much. 

KIM: No, he wasn’t. And I think maybe I saw the word “elusive” used to describe him, and that really works, because it’s thought he may have been a secret agent for Louis Napoleon… I’m thinking here about the elusive Pimpernel from The Scarlet Pimpernel, of course. Anyway, Ouida’s father Louis Rame mysteriously disappeared often, for whatever reason, but when he was around he taught her French, literature, history, math, and politics. 

AMY: What a cool dad!

KIM: yeah.

AMY: Cool “spy dad.”

KIM: Cool, mysterious, but also taught her a lot of stuff for that time.That’s pretty awesome.

AMY: Yeah. So around age 11, she created an imaginary fantasy world for herself, as children sometimes do. However, unlike most other people, she pretty much lived in that imaginary fantasy world for the rest of her life. Her father (cool spy dad) eventually disappeared for good (which is not so cool). But when she was 18, Ouida moved with her mother, her maternal grandmother, and her dog Beausire to London. And I guess the neighbors thought it was a bit unusual to live without a man in the house, and she also walked around alone a lot with the dog. (She was kind of a  “crazy dog lady” throughout her whole life. She was always thought to be overly devoted to her pets, always making sure they had the best food, and even the best furniture in the room, apparently.) 

KIM: Yeah, plenty of people do that now, so it doesn’t sound so weird. It’s kind of funny how much they talked about her craziness with the dogs. That really didn’t sound that bad. Anyway, Ouida began publishing her short stories filled with aristocratic characters in glamorous locations and then when she was 22, her first novel was serialized alongside Ellen Wood’s East Lynne. Readers gobbled it up and demanded more, and they also were intrigued by the eccentricity of Ouida. 

AMY: I mean, 22 is really young to have your first hit novel.

KIM: Mm-hmm.

AMY: Speaking of eccentric, though, here’s another fun fact: she tended to think every man she met was in love with her and she would make up these wild fantasies in her head that never actually happened. (It kind of reminded me a little of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. She has this secret internal world.) She was described in Irish poet William Allingham’s diary as having a “sinister, clever face” and a “voice like a carving knife.” Not exactly flattering… 

KIM: No, you wouldn’t necessarily want to be described as such. 

AMY: No, but I mean, she was clearly confident if she thought every man she met was in love with her.

KIM: It makes me laugh a little bit, because it actually sounds like manifesting, but it didn’t work! So I guess it’s an argument against manifesting. 

AMY: Poor Ouida!

KIM: I know. I know, well, you know what? It seems like she was happy, anyway, and that’s all that matters, right? So in 1867 (I love this) she established residence at The Langham Hotel in London and made such an impression there that the hotel’s VIP reward program today is actually named after her … Because she LIVED IT UP, and she pretty much always spent more than she earned!  She allegedly lowered the curtains during the day and wrote by candlelight, surrounded by purple flowers. Her monthly florist bill was astronomical. (I think there’s a saying, “spend more on flowers than you do on food”... I think she spent a lot of flowers and a lot on food.) But anyway, the Langham’s website says that she received her guests in bed and wrote, also in repose, on violet-coloured notepaper. I think maybe I’m going to try that, Amy, when I’m writing. I don’t know.

AMY: I know what my birthday gift is going to be for you now: Violet notepaper.

KIM: I love that idea. You always give the best gifts. And though she wrote prolifically, she was also throwing these incredibly LAVISH soirees that were attended by the writers we mentioned at the beginning, like Wilkie Collins, Oscar Wilde, Robert Browning, as well as artists, soldiers, and politicians. I can just imagine it, can’t you?

AMY: I can imagine it. She sounds like a complete party animal. I do think it’s a little ironic, though, that she wrote all these novels and no one’s heard of them, but the one thing she’s known for is like, the Langham hotel, being the “crazy party girl.” 

KIM: Yeah, and you can guess that probably the people who are in that VIP rewards program probably really don’t have any idea about her, which is kind of funny, too.

AMY: No clue. But it sounds like that hotel was kind of the literary world’s version of the “Riot Hyatt” in Hollywood that all the hair bands in the 80s used to party at.

KIM: Yeah, it’s like, “Riot Hyatt” mixed with Chateau Marmont, right?

AMY: Yes, totally.

KIM: I forgot to mention, too: I want to add that mostly men were at these parties. She had one female friend, I think that came, but otherwise, it was pretty much all men, which is interesting, too

AMY: Interesting. And it seems like that wouldn't necessarily be sanctioned in society to have a single woman hanging out with all these men, but she broke taboos for sure. Apparently, speaking of these salons, she also drew a lot of her story and character ideas from these gatherings she held. Two of her most successful were Under Two Flags and Idalia, both were penned not too long after she moved into The Langham hotel. Under Two Flags became her greatest success up until that point, and that’s when the first of the three major passions of her life also began. Kim, do you want to tell us what happened with this first passion? 

KIM: Yes, so basically this very handsome 61 year-old tenor (so quite a bit older than her) named Mario came to London to perform, and Ouida fell head over heels in love. At his farewell performance in Covent Gardens, she threw him a bouquet of flowers, an ivory cigar case, and a love note. Shocking, okay, but he never responded. He left London—they never even met—but she concocted this elaborate story in her head for why he had to leave her. He became her fantasy lover and she later wound up using him to inspire the hero of Moths, the book we’re talking about today. He was the singer Correze. 

AMY: Yeah, which actually nicely leads us into our discussion of Moths, which is not actually her most popular book. It was savaged by many critics at the time, but we feel it deserves reconsidering, especially as it deals in a unique way with some topics considered particularly “taboo” in the Victorian era, like divorce, adultery, and domestic violence. And also, it’s just a whole lot of fun to read! We liked this book.

KIM: Yeah, I actually liked it a lot. So, I’ll start, basically, with a broad sketch of the novel’s plot, and I won’t spoil anything for you: The heroine of Moths is Vere Herbert. She’s young, beautiful, very serious, and also very innocent. She goes to live with her widowed mother, Lady Dolly, who basically flits from one continental vacation spot to the next in a decadent society of shallow, rich women and playboys. Her mother is at best, negligent, and at worst -- well, she manipulates Vere into marrying the worst possible guy, Prince Zouroff. He has this well-deserved reputation for being pretty depraved and cruel. 

AMY: Even some of the men in this world are appalled by the thought of him marrying Vere, but the prince is creepily obsessed with her innocence (and he sees her as a conquest). Vere herself would rather die than marry him, but some mitigating circumstances make her feel she has no other choice. So she goes to the altar like a woman going to her grave. And we should point out that Vere is this naturally beautiful young woman (in contrast to all the artificially beautiful women surrounding her), but having to marry a man she despises turns her into this stoic ice queen. Ouida plays up this metaphor too — she always describes Vere in terms of snow and frost and she’s often wearing white. Ouida says she has “grave proud eyes that looked like arctic stars.” And the whole time I was reading this book, I kept picturing physically, Vere looking like Robin Wright from The Princess Bride at her wedding to Prince Humperdink. (I don’t know if you remember that scene?) But I just pictured Robin Wright in the role of Vere because she has this stoicism to her you know? Like, “I do not love this man, but I’m going to do it because I have to.”

KIM: Yes, and I'm just thinking, you know, basically she is this natural English rose type character. And when she marries Prince Zouroff, who's from Russia, she basically becomes this cold ice queen. So it's like the proximity to him and his cool depravity turns her into this stoic ice queen character. 

AMY: Yeah.

KIM: Anyway, Prince Zouroff becomes irritated by his young bride’s chilly disdain for him, so he does everything he can to break her will, including flaunting his adultery in her face. He wants to get a rise out of her, but she just has this steely resolve not to crack. She stays with him because she’s too proud to be the subject of a scandal. And she obeys him out of a misplaced sense of wifely duty. They’re equally determined. 

AMY: Meanwhile, Vere’s beginning to develop feelings for the young and handsome opera singer Correze (which, as we said, is based on a man that Ouida was crushing on). And you’ve got to admit… Correze is a pretty dreamy guy, right? I kind of liked him.

KIM: Yeah, he’s super handsome and charming. I actually fell a little bit in love with him while I was reading it. Totally.

AMY: She is tempted to cheat on this horrible husband with this amazing guy she adores -- and you have this kind of “will-she-or-won’t-she?” question throughout the whole book, because it totally makes sense. She’s miserable in her marriage. Why not just give her heart to this kind, handsome opera singer? But Vere knows that to do so would almost be like handing her husband a “win” because it would reduce her to his level.

KIM: And, okay, this is where I have to make my argument for the Proustian qualities of this book. And it’s not just that this is a long book, okay? It’s a long book, right, Amy? But Nabakov said about In Search of Lost Time that “The transmutation of sensation into sentiment, the ebb and tide of memory, waves of emotions such as desire, jealousy, and artistic euphoria—this is the material of this enormous and yet singularly light and translucent work.” 

AMY: Which, I’ve never read any Proust so I need you to put that more into layman’s terms for me.

KIM: I think just the sentiments that Nabokov is talking about here. The desire, jealousy, and artistic euphoria — I think those things are also in Moths. Treated differently, but the ideas are there. So I think that is where the comparisons lie. There are also many differences between Ouidaa and Proust, but the treatment of the subject matter is similar. And okay, the plot of Moths sounds kind of basic and lurid, but you have to hear the prose to get a feel for what makes it so entertaining, decadent, and even, I think, wickedly hilarious! And the characters become more nuanced and complex (like Proust’s do) as the novel progresses. 

AMY: Given that, I think it would be a good spot to read a passage from Moths for our listeners right now. 

KIM: I love that idea.

AMY: Okay, so this is a very early passage from the book featuring the horrible “Mommy Dearest,” Lady Dolly. (She’s one of the villains of the book, but at the same time, she reminds me a lot of Lady Montdore from Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate. She’s very funny). 

KIM: She gets the funniest lines and thoughts, I think.

AMY: Yeah, one hundred percent. So she and all her society friends are at a resort town in France enjoying the beach when a new arrival turns up wearing this ugly brown holland dress — the horror! But as the young woman approaches, Lady Dolly’s horror multiplies tenfold when she realizes it’s her daughter, her long-lost daughter, that has been living with another guardian for a while. (As we mentioned, Lady Dolly had basically pawned off her kid on an in-law to raise after Vere’s father died, so she hasn’t seen her in years.) And this is where the story continues:

   Lady Dolly gave a sharp little scream, then stood still. Her pretty face was very blank, her rosy small mouth was parted in amaze and disgust.

   “IN THAT DRESS!” she gasped, when the position became clear to her and her senses returned.

   But the brown holland was clinging in a wild and joyous kind of horrible, barbarous way all about her, as it seemed, and the old Scotch plaid was pressing itself against her baptiste skirts.

   “Oh, mother! How lovely you are! Not changed in the very least! Don’t you know me? Oh dear! Don’t you know me? I am Vere.”

   Lady Dolly was a sweet-tempered woman by nature and only made fretful by maids’ contretemps, debts, husbands, and other disagreeable accompaniments of life. But, at this moment, she had no other sense than that of rage. She could have struck her sunshade furiously at all creation; she could have fainted, only the situation would have been rendered more ridiculous still if she had, and that consciousness sustained her; the sands, and the planks, and the sea, and the sun, all went round her in a whirl of wrath. She could hear all her lovers, and friends, and rivals, and enemies tittering; and Princess Helene Olgarouski, who was at her shoulder, said in the pleasantist way —

   “Is that your little daughter, dear? Why she is quite a woman! A new beauty for Monseigneur.”

   Lady Dolly could have slain her hundreds in that moment, had her sunshade but been of steel. To be made ridiculous! There is no more disastrous destiny under the sun.

I mean, that’s our introduction to Lady Dolly, and what a FANTASTIC set-up! You just instantly want to know more about her and hear more of this woman talking. 

KIM: I can't believe you had to read that over me laughing over here. Hopefully you can edit that out. I'm sorry, but I'm dying. There's so much melodrama in Lady Dolly. And there’s a line a bit later: “Lady Dolly felt the mist over her eyes again, and this time she knew it was not the prawns.” You can see why Ouida was friends with Oscar Wilde, right?! I mean, she has such a sense of humor. And she is very well-read; she drops a lot of little notes to explain things and her scope of knowledge seems to be both broad and deep. And maybe a lot of that comes from her work with her dad in her early years — all that education. I’ll admit maybe it could be just a bit showy offy, but is it a stretch to say it’s like a moth, maybe? Flimsy but with substance?

AMY: I don’t know, but that’s also sort of describing a lot of the characters in this book who have everything, but are also vapid and shallow. And moths in this book are of course a metaphor for this well-to-do society, and particularly women like the ones in Lady Dolly’s crew. If Bravo TV did a “Real Housewives of Victorian High Society,” most of the women in this novel (excluding our heroine, Vere, she doesn’t count) but every other woman in this book would make up that cast, I think.

KIM: Absolutely. I love that comparison. That is a perfect comparison; that’s hilarious.

AMY: Yeah, if you like Victorian literature and you also have a guilty pleasure for “The Real Housewives,” this book is for you.

KIM: Absolutely.

AMY: So yeah, these women really don’t do anything to contribute to society other than be fashionable and beautiful, basically, and obsess over that and hunt out their new lovers. Ouida writes that this “...is a world full of moths.  Half the moths are burning themselves in feverish frailty, the other half are corroding and consuming all they touch.” And I know she’s lobbing criticism at these superficial socialite women, but to me, honestly, the less virtuous characters are MUCH more interesting and MUCH more fun to read about than Vere. I kept thinking that Vere was SUCH a pill.

KIM: Totally. Oh my gosh, yes, thank you!

AMY: Yeah, I didn’t know if you were going to agree with me or not, because she’s painted as the heroine, like, the protagonist that you’re supposed to love. And I just kept thinking of her as this annoying, saintly martyr. She just gets on my nerves after a while — she's on this high pedestal of her own appointment, you know?

KIM: Yeah, it kind of makes you think that on some level, I think Ouida I mean ... clearly she enjoyed these parties, and this decadence and everything. So maybe even though there's an evil component, I guess you’d say, or a really bad component to Lady Dolly, she's interesting and fun. And I think there's something to be said for those characters and those people and the interesting life that they're living. I mean, I wanted to read more about them actually, in the book. When I got to the “Vere” parts. I was a little bit like ...

AMY: Yeah, you’re like, “Oh, here we go with Vere and her moralizing.” Yes. I wanted the other ladies in the book to just gather around her and sing that song from Grease, like, “Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee.” They kind of were doing that. They were all kind of talking about her behind her back and rolling their eyes, like, “Oh, what a drip to be around.” She just needed to just live and let live a little bit and stop judging everybody else. 

KIM: Absolutely. And I think maybe, given what we know about Ouida I wonder if she wanted us to have that feeling? I don't know. It's interesting to think about.

AMY: Yeah. Actually one of my favorite characters was this American heiress named Fuschia Leach. (Such a good name).

KIM: It’s a great name.

AMY: It was interesting to see Ouida write an American character because she definitely mocks her as this crass, title-grabbing yokel, you know? (“Leach” is her last name, which makes sense) But she also, perhaps, has more heart and I think was the least phony of any of the other women in the book, and I thought that there was something intriguing about that. 

KIM:  I agree. And I wonder why Ouida felt that she couldn't make Vere a more likeable character?

AMY: Or did she think that was likable? 

KIM: I feel like maybe I'm just throwing this out there. Maybe it could have been the only way she felt that she could have her do what she does at the end of the book, which I don't want to ruin. But I wonder if she had to make her so noble that she would be excused from the choices she makes at the end of the book. 

AMY: Maybe.

KIM: So, but what’s most interesting to me throughout the book was Ouida’s commentary on marriage. She repeatedly compares marriage to slavery and prostiution. (Only the prostitutes seem to have it better off than Vere….) 

AMY: Yeah, I wouldn’t have wanted Vere’s life. Because materially speaking, she has everything. I mean, castles (literal castles!), all the clothes in the world, jewels — she’s dripping in diamonds. But none of it matters because she’s subject to her husband’s iron rule. And Zouroff is basically that horrible husband in the Julia Roberts movie, Sleeping With the Enemy. 

KIM: Oh my god, that movie. I was a kid when I saw it, and it made a big impression.

AMY: And that's why you want her to run away with Correze, the opera singer. Why are you not doing this?

KIM: Yes.

AMY: At one point he tells Vere: “I am your master, and I can be a bad master.” Chilling. 

KIM: Yes.

AMY: And even though I had some issues with Vere’s sanctimoniousness, as we’ve talked about, you do have to give her credit at the way she responded to this asshole throughout the whole book. She calmly obeys him, but she had a knack for wording her responses in such a way that infuriates him. And it’s really kind of masterful, and that is one part of Vere that I loved. 

KIM: Yes. She does know how to push his every button. And even though Moths doesn’t paint the most positive portrait of marriage, some modern critics think she actually isn’t harsh enough. But I would argue that given the context of how stifling Victorian rules can be, it’s kind of no wonder Ouida made up these extravagant, emotionally dramatic stories (and by the way, they had overt sexuality, and the readers ate them up, I think, because of that.) Clearly she was tapping into something. And, I mean, it kind of seems like an appropriate response to me. What do you think?

AMY: There was a lot in this book that reminded me a lot of Mary Astell and Aphra Behn, from our previous episodes. This idea of, like, “Why do women have to be forced into a marriage that’s going to ruin their life?” But I do think readers at the time must have been absolutely floored (or outraged) by Ouida’s savage criticism of marriage. Married women would have been the ones reading this book, you know, so it’s like … I could almost see them taking umbrage because they made the decision to get married, you know, and you’re kind of trapped in that life, and she’s judging so harshly. 

KIM: Yes.

AMY: But in this case, I also wonder if maybe her criticism of marriage stemmed from her own disappointments in romance. Could there be a bit of resentment here? What else do we know about her personal life? You talked about the opera singer that she fell for, that was you know, that was not reciprocated. What else happened?

KIM: Right, so, well, she and her mother, after the time living in the Langham, relocated permanently to Italy where she lived a life of luxury, (while she could afford it, anyway — she was always overspending). At times she had as many as 30 dogs living with her. And then she had this long-term “friendship” with a man who was devoted to her, but sadly, she found out he was also having an ongoing affair with someone else. This reminded me of a lot of some of the satellite characters in Moths. So being a writer, this was fodder for a scandalous and very recognizable roman a clef that she wrote about this ongoing affair that he had. And it was during a period of depression after this that she wrote Moths. In spite of being trashed by many critics, booksellers couldn’t keep it in stock and a cheap version was published just four months afterward. It’s said that Moths influenced both Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, which is pretty cool. But despite the book’s success, apparently at one point, her landlord had some peasants remove her from her villa because she wasn’t paying her bills. She then fell in love with the son of the novelist Bulwer-Lytton, but he wasn’t into her. She turned it into one of her imaginary lovers and kept on writing. But she was soon evicted again and destitute. Despite that, she wrote a novel The Masserines in 1897, which Max Beerbohm praised in a collection of essays dedicated to the author. Meanwhile Vernon Lee (she’s a writer we mention in our episode on Amy Levy) insulted Ouida in one of her articles, and The Daily Mail printed a picture of a peasant that was said to be Ouida. She wasn’t thought conventionally beautiful at all, so it was this added insult here. Everyone was thinking of this, you know, horrible-looking destitute woman.

AMY: That’s really sad. I mean, I think I can’t really blame her for creating these fantasy relationships, both in her head and on the page. A fictional lover of your own creation is not going to let you down. But it seems like people either loved her or hated her and her writing, don’t you think? Willa Cather once described Ouida as having a “brilliant mind that never matured,” right?  And I think in some ways this just makes her a more entertaining writer. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

KIM: I agree. I mean, she had fun in a safe way that worked for her! And she lived in this fantasy world. I mean, you know, good for her. She actually coined the term “New Woman” in an essay in May 1894 and she lived it: she was an unmarried woman who worked for a living, initiated relationships with men outside of marriage, and made her own rules. Her heroine Vere has the physical strength, courage, and intelligence of a New Woman and finds a life outside of the bonds of her first marriage to Prince Zouroff. Many of the women in the book have also done the same, and as we noted at the beginning of the show, Ouida includes divorce in her plot, and it’s actually treated as a positive thing. So we won’t get too specific about how Vere’s story ends — I do think the payoff ends up being worth it, but as for Ouida, she died of pneumonia in 1908 at the age of sixty-nine. 

AMY: But what a life! I didn't know that she coined the term “New Woman.” I think that's cool, because we mention that a lot in our episodes. Yet I mean, she supported herself and her mom for more than 30 years and she just kept churning out books because she knew what she wanted out of life. She wanted the finest things and she wanted to have fun! There were two early films based on Moths in 1913 and 1917, and a 1977 British film based on it too. I’m curious about that one, because the scenic locales in this book, you know … they are in the South of France. They are in Swiss mountain villages. They are in the wilds of Russia — castles all over the place. Cinematically, this book would be SO GORGEOUS to see as a film. We both had a lot of fun reading it, and really encourage you to pick this one up. It is a long book, but it’s one of those fun ones to immerse yourself in. If you’re going to get it, get the Broadview Edition, which has a ton of additional info on Ouida’s life in there. So Kim, do you think you would want to read more Ouida now that you've read Moths?

KIM: Yeah, I absolutely think so, and here’s the thing: I loved Moths, and I loved being immersed in that world, and then to know that it's not even one of her potentially one of her best or a lot of people's favorite. So I definitely would like to read more.

AMY: I think the Harlequin romance comparison is wrong. I don't like that.

KIM: Yes. I don’t agree either.

AMY: Is it a sexy book? Yes. Is there some romance in it? Yes. But to me it was a lot more like a British Edith Wharton novel. 

KIM: Yes. 

AMY: Or even like Dangerous Liaisons. That kept coming to mind.

KIM: Yes, I agree.

AMY: So if you like those kinds of books, Ouida is an author who would probably appeal to you. 

KIM: Yeah, the whole idea of it being a Harlequin novel... I mean, when I think of Harlequin, I think of your standard plot. Every book has the exact same A..B..C.. you know, and it's like, for me Moths is nothing like that. The only thing that it has in common with Harlequin is that there's some romance in it. Otherwise, no.

AMY: Yeah, I'm sure at the time, the word “trashy” might have been bandied about with regard to it for that society at that time.

KIM: Yes, that’s a good point.

AMY: But today, it's not you know ... today, it's just an interesting good book. 

KIM: Yes. But the complexity of the characters and everything. Definitely, definitely more three-dimensional. (Not that there's anything wrong with romance novels, either, by the way.)

AMY: Right. The book is just dripping with diamonds and glamor and wit — and definitely some shocking social commentary, too. So give our girl Ouida a go and maybe you can embark on your own inner fantasy (like she did) about living in fin de siecle Europe, right?

KIM: Yeah, totally. That’s a fantasy I’m always down for. Anyway, that’s all for today’s episode. Consider giving us a rating and review if you enjoyed it. Tell all your book-loving friends, and check out LostLadiesofLit.com for further reading material.

AMY: And it’s also time right now for a fan shout-out! We want to say a huge “thank you” to Rosemary Kelty, who reached out to us recently with an awesome list of recommended “lost ladies” including Winifred Holtby, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Kathryn Forbes, Lillie Devereux Blake and Hisaye Yamamoto. These are all authors who were unknown to us and we have added them to our increasingly long list of future podcast subjects. Rosemary also wrote that she was excited to dive into Edna Furber’s So Big…. and that she’s also following my lead by attempting to tackle Clarissa, a.k.a. the book that never ends. I honestly think, Rosemary, you're going to enjoy them both, but I do suspect you'll probably finish Clarissa before I do. So…

KIM: Okay, you guys can do this and it's totally worth it. And then you'll be able to say that you read it. 

AMY: Yes, yes. Bye, everybody!

KIM: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit was produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes.