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).
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.
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, 1997, pp. 232-45.
232
Primary recipients of her correspondence included Thomas Carlyle, her mother Grace Welsh
, her maternal...
Family and Intimate relationships
Thomas Carlyle
Following TC
's death, James Anthony Froude
published Reminiscences of Carlyle, which presented an unfavourable picture of the Carlyles' marriage. This angered their friend Margaret Oliphant
, and she responded with an essay providing...
Friends, Associates
Jane Welsh Carlyle
Margaret Oliphant
's visits to the Carlyles
in London led to her close friendship with Jane Welsh Carlyle
.
There is some uncertainty about this date. In her autobiography Oliphant fancies
qtd. in
Trela, Dale J. “Jane Welsh Carlyle and Margaret Oliphant: An Unsung Friendship”. The Carlyle Annual, Vol.
11
, 1990, pp. 31-40.
32
that she first...
Reception
Jane Welsh Carlyle
In response to Froude
's critique of theCarlyles
' marriage in Reminiscences, Margaret Oliphant
published a glowing account of her friendship with the couple in Macmillan's Magazine.
Carlyle, Jane Welsh. “Editorial Materials”. Jane Welsh Carlyle: A New Selection of Her Letters, edited by Trudy Bliss, Victor Gollancz, 1950, p. various pages.
345
Trela, Dale J. “Margaret Oliphant’s ‘bravest words yet spoken’ on Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle”. Carlyle Studies Annual, Vol.
18
, 1998, pp. 153-66.
163
Literary responses
Rhoda Broughton
This novel had marked success, selling three thousand copies in the year of its publication.
Wood, Marilyn. Rhoda Broughton: Profile of a Novelist. Paul Watkins, 1993.
25
It was also widely reviewed. In her 1867 attack on the sensation novel, Margaret Oliphant
acknowledged that Cometh Up...
Textual Production
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
MEB
, as the author of Lady Audley's Secret, re-issued in three volumes her penny-dreadful contribution Rupert Godwin—to the extreme disapproval of Margaret Oliphant
, expressed in Blackwood's.
Cox, Michael, editor. The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press, 2002, 2 vols.
Wolff, Robert Lee. Sensational Victorian. Garland, 1979.
122
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...
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
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...
Literary responses
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Informal and critical responses to The Doctor's Wife during its serialisation caused MEB
to revise the conclusion. She admitted to Bulwer-Lytton
in a letter dated 7 September 1864 that I am so apt to be...
Literary responses
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
They were in time to reap the full force of Margaret Oliphant
's disapproval in her anti-sensation-novel article in Blackwood's. She found it deeply shocking that leading literary journals were praising Rupert Godwin...
Literary responses
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Margaret Oliphant
's critique of the sensation novel in 1867 relied heavily on attacking MEB
's reputation. The best she would say was that some of Braddon's works deserved some of their success. Braddon's sole...
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...
