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...
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...
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.
Keating, Peter John. “A Pen under Pressure”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 3770, p. 616.
616
Leavis, Q. D. Collected Essays. Editor Singh, G., Cambridge University Press.
3: vii
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Maria Theresa Longworth
She was not the only one to find inspiration for writing in her court experience. In addition to widespread newspaper coverage and several reports of the trials themselves, other creative responses continued to appear. J. R. O'Flanagan
Textual Production
Marie Belloc Lowndes
MBL
decided in her teens that she wanted to be a writer. In 1887, with the encouragement of her mother
(who was based in France) the two of them embarked on a winter in the...
Literary responses
Anne Marsh
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography notes AM
's very high contemporary reputation. It cites the London Weekly Chronicle and Margaret Oliphant
each hailing her, in her heyday, as a leader among women novelists (though...
Publishing
Harriet Martineau
Chapman used her own memorials (based, she claimed, on full access to HM
's private and public papers, personal letters, and her own and others' first-hand knowledge) to flesh out the account in the manuscript...
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
Ouida
Ouida
published her second novel, Strathmore: this work was mentioned by Margaret Oliphant
in her attack on the sensation noveltwo years later in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.
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.
