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
Travel Anne Thackeray Ritchie
In summer 1875, ATR joined Minny and Leslie Stephen in Switzerland, where they travelled with Margaret Oliphant (who became a friend of ATR ).
Gérin, Winifred. Anne Thackeray Ritchie: A Biography. Oxford University Press.
164
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Sarah Tytler
Clearly delighted with the opportunity to mix in literary circles, ST recorded her personal observations of these authors in Men and Women Met by the Way, the final 100-page-long section of her family autobiography...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Penelope Fitzgerald
It includes Fitzgerald's comments on works by Jane Austen , George Eliot , Margaret Oliphant , Barbara Pym , Carol Shields , and Amy Tan , as well as on a number of recent literary...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Eunice Guthrie Murray
Her subjects here include such comparatively well-known authors as Joanna Baillie , Anne Grant , and Margaret Oliphant , and also the almost unknown diarist and novelist Margaret Calderwood .
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 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
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 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 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 Production Elizabeth Charles
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.
Textual Production Annie Louisa Walker
ALW , as Mrs Harry Coghill finished arrang[ing] and edit[ing]The Autobiography and Letters of Mrs. M. O. W. Oliphant, which appeared in print by the following month.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Leavis, Q. D., and Margaret Oliphant. “Introduction”. Autobiography and Letters of Mrs. Margaret Oliphant, edited by Annie Louisa Walker and Annie Louisa Walker, Leicester University Press, pp. 9-34.
[35], xi
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 Q. D. Leavis
QDL (a leading proponent of the significance of Margaret Oliphant's writing at a time when her status was low) contributed the introduction to a new edition of Oliphant 's formerly neglected novel Miss Marjoribanks, 1866.
British Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons.
1970
Leavis, Q. D. Collected Essays. Editor Singh, G., Cambridge University Press.
3: vii

Timeline

April 1817: The first issue of Blackwood's Edinburgh...

Writing climate item

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...

Writing climate item

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 monthly Longman's...

Writing climate item

November 1882

The first issue of the monthlyLongman's Magazine was published.

1897: With her publication of Grains of Sense,...

Women writers item

1897

With her publication of Grains of Sense, philosopher Victoria, Lady Welby , shifted from theology towards a more academic and analytic study of meaning.

Texts

Oliphant, Margaret. A Beleaguered City. Macmillan, 1879.
Oliphant, Margaret. A Child’s History of Scotland. T. Fisher Unwin, 1895.
Oliphant, Margaret. A Country Gentleman and His Family. Macmillan, 1886.
Oliphant, Margaret. A Little Pilgrim in the Unseen. Macmillan, 1882.
Oliphant, Margaret. Annals of a Publishing House: William Blackwood and His Sons, Their Magazine and Friends. Blackwood, 1897.
Oliphant, Margaret. Caleb Field: A Tale of the Puritans. Colburn, 1851.
Oliphant, Margaret. Cervantes. Blackwood, 1877.
Oliphant, Margaret. Dante. Blackwood, 1877.
Oliphant, Margaret. For Love and Life. Hurst and Blackett, 1874.
Oliphant, Margaret. Hester: A Story of Contemporary Life. Macmillan, 1883.
Oliphant, Margaret. Historical Characters of the Reign of Queen Anne. Century Company, 1894.
Oliphant, Margaret. Historical Sketches of the Reign of George II. Blackwood, 1869.
Oliphant, Margaret. Innocent: A Tale of Modern Life. S. Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, 1873.
Leavis, Q. D., and Margaret Oliphant. “Introduction”. Miss Marjoribanks, Zodiac, 1969, pp. 1-24.
Leavis, Q. D., and Margaret Oliphant. “Introduction”. Autobiography and Letters of Mrs. Margaret Oliphant, edited by Annie Louisa Walker and Annie Louisa Walker, Leicester University Press, 1974, pp. 9-34.
Oliphant, Margaret. “Introduction”. The Library Window. A Story of the Seen and the Unseen, edited by Annmarie Drury, Broadview, 2019.
Oliphant, Margaret. Jeanne d’Arc; Her Life and Death. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1896.
Oliphant, Margaret. Katie Stewart. Harper, 1852.
Oliphant, Margaret. Kirsteen: A Story of a Scotch Family Seventy Years Ago. Macmillan, 1890.
Oliphant, Margaret. Lady Car; The Sequel of a Life. Longmans, Green, 1889.
Oliphant, Margaret. Lilliesleaf. Hurst and Blackett, 1855.
Oliphant, Margaret. Magdalen Hepburn: A Story of the Scottish Reformation. Hurst and Blackett, 1854.
Oliphant, Margaret. Memoir of Count de Montalembert: A Chapter of Recent French History. Blackwood, 1872.
Oliphant, Margaret. Memoir of the Life of Laurence Oliphant and of Alice Oliphant, His Wife. Blackwood, 1891.
Oliphant, Margaret. Merkland: A Story of Scottish Life. Colburn, 1851.