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).
"Margaret Oliphant" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Margaret_Oliphant_Wilson_Oliphant.jpg.This work is licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license. This work is in the public domain.
In publishing Hurrish, EL
eschewed using her courtesy title as the Honourable, though she is the Hon. on most of her later works. This novel proved popular, being published in Edinburgh, London...
ALW
became Oliphant
's housekeeper, confidante, and amanuensis. In February 1877 Oliphant passed on to her the continuation of the arduous translation from French of Montalembert
's Les Moines d'Occident, suggesting to Blackwood's
a...
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...
Family and Intimate relationships
Annie Louisa Walker
ALW
was orphaned and sisterless by the time she was in her mid-twenties. Little else known of her family, except that Margaret Oliphant
was her second cousin.
Jay, Elisabeth. Mrs Oliphant: "A Fiction to Herself": A Literary Life. Clarendon Press, 1995.
19
Cook, Ramsay, editor. Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.
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
Trela, Dale J. “Jane Welsh Carlyle and Margaret Oliphant: An Unsung Friendship”. The Carlyle Annual, pp. 31 -40.
32
that she first...
Friends, Associates
Sarah Tytler
ST
's career as a writer introduced her to many leading literary figures (especially those of Scots origin) whom she entertainingly describes in Three Generations.
Tytler, Sarah. Three Generations. J. Murray, 1911.
ATR
lived with the Stephens
after their marriage, and while there became a friend of such literary figures as George Meredith
, Henry James
(who described her after an early encounter as exquisitely irrational)...
ATR
wrote to Charlotte Yonge
a few years later, lamenting: oh! what a pity it is that we are all growing old who have had such happy happy times with one another.
Ritchie, Anne Thackeray. Anne Thackeray Ritchie: Journals and Letters. Bloom, Abigail Burnham and John MaynardEditors , Ohio State University Press, 1994.
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...
Timeline
April 1817
The first issue of Blackwood's EdinburghMagazine appeared; founder William Blackwood
intended to offer Tory competition to the liberal Edinburgh Review.
April 1879
James Murray
—editor since 1 March of what was to become the Oxford English Dictionary—issued an Appeal for readers to supply illustrative quotations.
November 1882
The first issue of the monthlyLongman's Magazine was published.
1897
With her publication of Grains of Sense, philosopher Victoria, Lady Welby
, shifted from theology towards a more academic and analytic study of meaning.