Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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).
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
Literary responses
Caroline Bowles
The Gentleman's Magazine's obituary for Bowles recalled that Chapters on Churchyardscontributed materially to establish her literary reputation and also showed powers of narrative fitting her for a popular and profitable branch of composition...
Literary responses
Sarah Grand
Margaret Oliphant
, reviewing the novel for Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1889, described it as the expression of a great many thoughts of the moment, and of a desire which is stronger than it ever...
Literary responses
Eliza Lynn Linton
Before the second edition was out, in January 1873, ELL
wrote to Mark Rutherford
to thank him for his approval of this child of my deepest heart & faith. Her letter was offered for sale...
Literary responses
Eliza Lynn Linton
In 1878, ELL
wrote to a relative, True success comes only by hard work, great courage in self-correction, and the most earnest and intense determination to succeed, not thinking that every endeavour is already success...
Literary responses
Anne Thackeray Ritchie
Geraldine Jewsbury
in the Athenæum saw considerable promise in the book, but blamed it for verging on a treatment of incest which ought to be . . . inadmissable for a novel.
Shankman, Lillian F., and Anne Thackeray Ritchie. “Biographical Commentary and Notes”. Anne Thackeray Ritchie: Journals and Letters, edited by Abigail Burnham Bloom et al., Ohio State University Press, p. various pages.
67
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.
Margaret Oliphant
Literary responses
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Margaret Oliphant
, however, disparaged Aurora Floyd in Novels, her Blackwood's attack of September 1867 on the sensation novel, a school of which she took MEB
to be the leader. Recognising that the ignorant...
Literary responses
Thomas Hardy
Early reviews were good, the Athenæum prophesying that Tess would rank high among the achievements of the Victorian novel, and the Pall Mall Gazette calling it the strongest English novel of many years.
Hardy, Thomas. “General Introduction”. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, edited by Juliet Grindle and Simon Gatrell, Clarendon Press, pp. 1-103.
16
Margaret Oliphant
Literary responses
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
His article, Sensation Novelists: Miss Braddon, which covered seven novels she had published since 1862, made a famous personal attack in asserting that her work evidenced familiarity with a very low type of female...
Colby, Vineta. The Singular Anomaly: Women Novelists of the Nineteenth Century. New York University Press.
150
Sales were good, but there were some hostile reviews...
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...
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
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...
