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
Textual Production Marina Warner
MW published Joan of Arc : The Image of Female Heroism, her study of the legendary Maid of Orleans who became a fearless soldier, a martyr, and eventually a saint.
Warner's biography of Joan...
Textual Production Annie S. Swan
ASS published at Edinburgh a novel, Carlowrie; or, Among Lothian Folk, which was scathingly reviewed by Margaret Oliphant .
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Swan, Annie S. My Life. Ivor Nicholson and Watson.
40
Textual Production Emily Davies
Under ED 's editorship, the periodical combined literary contributions (such as poetry by Christina Rossetti and fiction by Thomas Adolphus Trollope ) with book reviews, reports of bodies such as the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women
Textual Production Ouida
Ouida published her second novel, Strathmore: this work was mentioned by Margaret Oliphant in her attack on the sensation noveltwo years later in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Oliphant, Margaret. “Novels”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
102
, W. Blackwood, pp. 257-80.
269
The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070714065452/http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~asp/v2/home.html.
1970 (29 July 1865): 142-3
Textual Production Ouida
Ouida published her novel Idalia (another of those mentioned by Margaret Oliphant in her attack on the sensation novel in September this year).
Oliphant, Margaret. “Novels”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
102
, W. Blackwood, pp. 257-80.
269
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2053 (2 March 1867): 283
Textual Production Anna Swanwick
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
While working for the Athenæum, she reviewed works by literary figures including Mary Russell Mitford , Elizabeth Gaskell , Harriet Beecher Stowe , Camilla Crosland , Anthony Trollope , George Eliot , Julia Kavanagh
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 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 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 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 Features Margery Allingham
This novel introduced the series detective Albert Campion, whose gentlemanly manner became MA 's hallmark. In this novel he remains on the sidelines of the story as a privileged and apparently brainless young man who...
Textual Features Anne Thackeray Ritchie
ATR 's domestic realism bears comparison with other neglected chroniclers of the complexities of unsensational Victorian middle-class female lives such as Dinah Mulock Craik and Margaret Oliphant , and her revisions of classic fairy tales...
Textual Features Ella D'Arcy
Both men are treated with striking ambivalence (an ambivalence reminiscent of Margaret Oliphant , whose work it is not certain that D'Arcy knew). Le Mesurier clearly behaved badly, but he truly loved Lily. Shergold aimed...
Textual Features Mary Webb
Critics have called Dormer Old House itself the protagonist of this novel; its description fills the opening chapter. Like the country house in MW 's previous book, it takes a gothic colouring from the unhappiness...

Timeline

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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.