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).
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...
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...
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...
JI
was wildly successful during her life—she even had a ship named after her while she lived—but it is only very recently that a resurgence of scholarship on and appreciation of her has begun. An...
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 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
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
Friends, Associates
Anna Maria Hall
One of AMH
's closest friends was the actress Helen Faucit
, later Lady Martin. Though socially conservative in her attitudes, she was apparently more ready than her husband to achieve friendly relations with those...
Occupation
Anna Maria Hall
AMH
provided help and support to many young writers, including Dinah Craik
and Margaret Oliphant
.
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.
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
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...
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
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.
