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
Literary responses Charlotte Yonge
During her lifetime CY was ranked as a serious novelist with Austen , Trollope , Balzac , and Zola . Contemporaries like Louisa Alcott , Margaret Oliphant , Ellen Wood , and Rhoda Broughton made...
Literary responses Ellen Wood
Within a few years EW 's popularity had decidedly waned. Margaret Oliphant in The Victorian Age of English Literature found nothing to say about Wood beyond that fact that her works sold by the fifty...
Textual Features Mary Webb
Critics have called Dormer Old House itself the protagonist of this novel; its description fills the opening chapter. Like the country house in MW 's previous book, it takes a gothic colouring from the unhappiness...
Textual Production Marina Warner
MW published Joan of Arc : The Image of Female Heroism, her study of the legendary Maid of Orleans who became a fearless soldier, a martyr, and eventually a saint.
Warner's biography of Joan...
Literary responses Mary Augusta Ward
MAW 's friend Benjamin Jowett praised David Grieve as the best novel since George Eliot .Walter Pater also approved, but critics were not enthusiastic.
Colby, Vineta. The Singular Anomaly: Women Novelists of the Nineteenth Century. New York University Press.
150
Sales were good, but there were some hostile reviews...
Literary responses Mary Augusta Ward
Reviews were positive. Novelist Margaret Woods felt that the archaic world it depicted was the root of Marcella's charm.
Watters, Tamie, and Mary Augusta Ward. “Introduction”. Marcella, Virago, p. vii - xvi.
xvi
Margaret Oliphant criticised the author in Blackwood's for asking readers to surrender all our...
Friends, Associates Annie Louisa Walker
ALW joined the extended household of the widowed, eminent, hard-working author Margaret Oliphant , her distant cousin.
Jay, Elisabeth. Mrs Oliphant: "A Fiction to Herself": A Literary Life. Clarendon Press.
269
Williams, Merryn. Margaret Oliphant: A Critical Biography. St Martin’s Press.
89-90
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
Author summary Annie Louisa Walker
Writing in the late nineteenth century at first in Canada and later in England, ALW produced six novels, two books of poetry, a volume of plays for children and several short stories. She was...
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.
19
Cook, Ramsay, editor. Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. http://www.biographi.ca/index2.html.
Employer Annie Louisa Walker
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...
Intertextuality and Influence Annie Louisa Walker
In her Autobiography, Margaret Oliphant recalls that when ALW wrote to her in 1865 to introduce herself, she mentioned her literary aspirations, taking at that time the shape of poetry, against which I remember...
Publishing Annie Louisa Walker
After Margaret Oliphant 's death in 1897 ALW wrote a short biography of her cousin, which was published in the Fortnightly Review. She wrote another magazine biography the same year: of the painter George Mason
politics Queen Victoria
Perhaps the author whose writings and politics addressed the Queen the most frequently was Margaret Oliphant , whose biographical works often championed female monarchs, especially Victoria. A critic, correspondent, even friend of QV , Oliphant...
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.
261-344
She became an especially good friend of Dinah Mulock Craik

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.