Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Margaret Oliphant
-
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).
She dedicated it to James Martineau
in honour of their friendship of sixty years.
Swanwick, Anna. Poets the Interpreters of their Age. George Bell.
prelims
Her preface says: To the learned I have nothing to offer, but hopes to appeal to students and readers. She...
Textual Production
Geraldine Jewsbury
The success of woman novelists in the circulating libraries led many publishers to employ women readers.
Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own. Princeton University Press.
156-7
GJ
used her position with Richard Bentley and Son
to promote women writers such as Margaret Oliphant
and...
Textual Production
Jean Plaidy
JP
's Plantagenet saga, a series of fictionalized biographies, began with The Plantagenet Prelude, about the lives of Henry II
and his consort Eleanor of Aquitaine
.
Eleanor was another compelling historical figure, already...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Gaskell
The idea of self-improvement through writing and reading correlates to the strong emphasis in EG
's fiction on education and the impact of environment. This was undoubtedly influenced by a Unitarian intellectual background indebted to...
Textual Production
Jane Welsh Carlyle
From her youth to her death JWC
was a prolific letter-writer: more than three thousand of her letters survive.
Christianson, Aileen. “Jane Welsh Carlyle’s Private Writing Career”. A History of Scottish Women’s Writing, edited by Douglas Gifford and Dorothy McMillan, Edinburgh University Press, pp. 232-45.
232
Primary recipients of her correspondence included Thomas Carlyle, her mother Grace Welsh
, her maternal...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Charles
EC
published the short work Joan the Maid, which precedes Margaret Oliphant
's biography of Joan of Arc by seventeen years.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Textual Production
Annie Louisa Walker
ALW
, as Mrs Harry Coghill finished arrang[ing] and edit[ing]The Autobiography and Letters of Mrs. M. O. W. Oliphant, which appeared in print by the following month.
Leavis, Q. D., and Margaret Oliphant. “Introduction”. Autobiography and Letters of Mrs. Margaret Oliphant, edited by Annie Louisa Walker and Annie Louisa Walker, Leicester University Press, pp. 9-34.
[35], xi
Textual Production
Catherine Gore
CG
became a regular contributor to Blackwood's, recruited, as Margaret Oliphant
recorded, by Samuel Warren
. Oliphant noted her quickness to learn the going rate of remuneration for her several light articles.
Carson-Batchelor, Rhonda Lea. Margaret Oliphant: Gender, Identity, and Value in the Victorian Periodical Press. University of Alberta.
204
The...
Textual Production
Q. D. Leavis
QDL
(a leading proponent of the significance of Margaret Oliphant's writing at a time when her status was low) contributed the introduction to a new edition of Oliphant
's formerly neglected novel Miss Marjoribanks, 1866.
British Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons.
1970
Leavis, Q. D. Collected Essays. Editor Singh, G., Cambridge University Press.
3: vii
Textual Production
Catherine Gore
Margaret Oliphant
printed a good deal of CG
's professional correspondence in her Annals of a Publishing House, 1897.
Carson-Batchelor, Rhonda Lea. Margaret Oliphant: Gender, Identity, and Value in the Victorian Periodical Press. University of Alberta.
Keating, Peter John. “A Pen under Pressure”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 3770, p. 616.
616
Leavis, Q. D. Collected Essays. Editor Singh, G., Cambridge University Press.
3: vii
Textual Production
Blanche Warre Cornish
After the death of her friend Margaret Oliphant
on 25 June 1897, BWC
was so angered by a somewhat grudging appreciation that she countered with an eloquent and noble tribute.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. The Merry Wives of Westminster. Macmillan.
36
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Eunice Guthrie Murray
Her subjects here include such comparatively well-known authors as Joanna Baillie
, Anne Grant
, and Margaret Oliphant
, and also the almost unknown diarist and novelist Margaret Calderwood
.
