Margaret Oliphant

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Standard Name: Oliphant, Margaret
Birth Name: Margaret Oliphant Wilson
Married Name: Margaret Oliphant Oliphant
Pseudonym: Mrs Margaret Maitland
Pseudonym: M. O. W. O.
Used Form: M. O. W. Oliphant
As the breadwinner for her constantly extending family, MO was astonishingly productive. She published (sometimes by name, sometimes anonymously, often with no name but with allusion to her previous works) ninety-eight novels, and three times that many articles for Blackwood's and other magazines. She was equally prolific in short stories and in works of information: biography, socio-historical studies of cities, art criticism, historical sketches, literary histories, and a characteristic, fragmented autobiography, selective but nonetheless revealing. She also did translation and editing. She consistently foregrounds issues involved in Victorian expectations of womanhood: the relationships of daughter, sister, wife, and mother (especially the last).
Head-and-shoulders chalk drawing of a youthful-looking Margaret Oliphant by Frederick Sandys, 1881. She is wearing a brocaded dress and a plain lace cap on her grey hair. National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Health Mary Howitt
Within the first three years of her marriage, MH was pregnant four times; only the fourth time did the pregnancy produce a living child. After the birth she was dangerously ill for some time.
Dunicliff, Joy. Mary Howitt: Another Lost Victorian Writer. Excalibur Press of London.
95
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Rigby
Although she grew increasingly frail, ER continued writing throughout her last years. In January 1889 (her eightieth year) she published in the Quarterly Review another anonymous piece on Italy, Venice: Her Institutions and Private...
Intertextuality and Influence Annie Louisa Walker
In her Autobiography, Margaret Oliphant recalls that when ALW wrote to her in 1865 to introduce herself, she mentioned her literary aspirations, taking at that time the shape of poetry, against which I remember...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Lady Audley's Secret was immensely successful. According to Margaret Oliphant , Braddon here invented the fair-haired demon of modern fiction. Wicked women used to be brunettes long ago, now they are the daintiest, softest, prettiest...
Intertextuality and Influence Maria Theresa Longworth
She was not the only one to find inspiration for writing in her court experience. In addition to widespread newspaper coverage and several reports of the trials themselves, other creative responses continued to appear. J. R. O'Flanagan
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Helme
The Critical reviewed this novel two months after publication. It goes unmentioned by Virgil B. Heltzel in Fair Rosamond. A Study of the Development of a Literary Theme, 1947. Those preceding Helme in treating...
Literary responses Ménie Muriel Dowie
Reviews, however, though mixed, were not entirely unfavourable. Though many attacked the novel because of the audacity of the topics it tackled—Margaret Oliphant 's The Anti-Marriage League was a notable negative review—several that appeared...
Literary responses Charlotte Yonge
During her lifetime CY was ranked as a serious novelist with Austen , Trollope , Balzac , and Zola . Contemporaries like Louisa Alcott , Margaret Oliphant , Ellen Wood , and Rhoda Broughton made...
Literary responses George Eliot
Cross , concerned to protect and dignify her, chose the more sententious passages and excluded the spontaneous, trivial, and humorous remarks
Eliot, George. “Preface”. The George Eliot Letters, edited by Gordon S. Haight, Yale University Press, p. 1: ix - lxxvii.
xiv
from her personal writings, and presented an icon of Victorian moral earnestness; many...
Literary responses Geraldine Jewsbury
In Blackwood's in May 1855, Margaret Oliphant declared that we have seen few books so perfectly unsatisfactory as Constance Herbert.
Howe, Susanne. Geraldine Jewsbury: Her Life and Errors. George Allen and Unwin.
121
She criticized GJ for arranging her book around one woman's insanity, since the...
Literary responses Geraldine Jewsbury
Despite GJ 's reputation among her contemporaries as a major influence on Victorian literature, her contributions as author and critic have faded into obscurity. Late in the period, Margaret Oliphant passed her over in The...
Literary responses Laura Riding
Scholar Michael Sadleir gave a lunch party to celebrate the publication, and was impressed by LR 's ability to make her ancient characters real.
Friedmann, Elizabeth. A Mannered Grace. Persea Books.
295
He was agreeably surprised to learn that one of Riding's...
Literary responses Elizabeth Gaskell
Most reviews of North and South were positive, athough some criticized EG for what they saw as inaccuracies in her portrayal of northern industrial life. Chorley in the Athenæum called this one of the best...
Literary responses Catherine Gore
CG said that Bentley paid her three hundred pounds for Cecil, but then made her refund sixty on the grounds that the novel was not saleable (in which he was wrong).
Carson-Batchelor, Rhonda Lea. Margaret Oliphant: Gender, Identity, and Value in the Victorian Periodical Press. University of Alberta.
208
According to...
Literary responses Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Margaret Oliphant , writing in Blackwood's, harshly criticized Barbara Leigh Smith 's Brief Summary . . . of the Laws Concerning Women.
Oliphant, Margaret. “The Laws Concerning Women”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
79
, W. Blackwood, pp. 379-87.
79: 379-87

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Oliphant, Margaret. Miss Marjoribanks. W. Blackwood, 1866.
Oliphant, Margaret. “Mrs. Craik”. Macmillan’s Magazine, Vol.
57
, No. November, pp. 81-5.
Oliphant, Margaret. “Novels”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
94
, pp. 168-83.
Oliphant, Margaret. “Novels”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
102
, W. Blackwood, pp. 257-80.
Oliphant, Margaret. Old Mr. Tredgold: A Story of Two Sisters. Longmans, Green, 1895.
Oliphant, Margaret. Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland, of Sunnyside. Colburn, 1849.
Oliphant, Margaret. Phoebe, Junior: A Last Chronicle of Carlingford. Hurst and Blackett, 1876.
Macpherson, Gerardine. “Postscript”. Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jameson, edited by Margaret Oliphant, Longmans, Green, 1878.
Oliphant, Margaret. “Religious Memoirs”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
83
, No. June, W. Blackwood, pp. 703-18.
Oliphant, Margaret. Salem Chapel. W. Blackwood, 1863.
Oliphant, Margaret. Sheridan. Macmillan, 1883.
Oliphant, Margaret. Sir Tom. Macmillan, 1884.
Oliphant, Margaret. Squire Arden. Hurst and Blackett, 1891.
Oliphant, Margaret. “The Anti-Marriage League”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, No. 159, pp. 135-49.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Athelings; or, The Three Gifts. W. Blackwood, 1857.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Autobiography and Letters of Mrs. M. O. W. Oliphant. Editor Walker, Annie Louisa, Blackwood, 1899.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Curate in Charge. Macmillan, 1876.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Days of My Life. An Autobiography. Hurst and Blackett, 1857.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Greatest Heiress in England. Hurst and Blackett, 1879.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Ladies Lindores. Blackwood, 1883.
Oliphant, Margaret. “The Laws Concerning Women”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
79
, W. Blackwood, pp. 379-87.
Oliphant, Margaret. “The Life and Letters of George Eliot”. Lives of Victorian Literary Figures, edited by Gail Marshall et al., Pickering and Chatto, 2003, pp. 1: 139 - 80.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Life of Edward Irving. Blackwood, 1862.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Literary History of England in the End of the Eighteenth and Beginning of the Nineteenth Century. Macmillan, 1882.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Makers of Florence: Dante, Giotto, Savonarola; and Their City. Macmillan, 1876.