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
Health Mary Howitt
Within the first three years of her marriage, MH was pregnant four times; only the fourth time did the pregnancy produce a living child. After the birth she was dangerously ill for some time.
Dunicliff, Joy. Mary Howitt: Another Lost Victorian Writer. Excalibur Press of London, 1992.
95
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...
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Rigby
Although she grew increasingly frail, ER continued writing throughout her last years. In January 1889 (her eightieth year) she published in the Quarterly Review another anonymous piece on Italy, Venice: Her Institutions and Private...
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...
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
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Helme
The Critical reviewed this novel two months after publication. It goes unmentioned by Virgil B. Heltzel in Fair Rosamond. A Study of the Development of a Literary Theme, 1947. Those preceding Helme in treating...
Literary responses Anne Thackeray Ritchie
Geraldine Jewsbury in the Athenæum saw considerable promise in the book, but blamed it for verging on a treatment of incest which ought to be . . . inadmissable for a novel.
qtd. in
Shankman, Lillian F., and Anne Thackeray Ritchie. “Biographical Commentary and Notes”. Anne Thackeray Ritchie: Journals and Letters, edited by Abigail Burnham Bloom et al., Ohio State University Press, 1994, p. various pages.
67
The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070714065452/http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~asp/v2/home.html.
Margaret Oliphant
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...
Literary responses Jean Ingelow
JI was wildly successful during her life—she even had a ship named after her while she lived—but it is only very recently that a resurgence of scholarship on and appreciation of her has begun. An...
Literary responses Ménie Muriel Dowie
Reviews, however, though mixed, were not entirely unfavourable. Though many attacked the novel because of the audacity of the topics it tackled—Margaret Oliphant 's The Anti-Marriage League was a notable negative review—several that appeared...
Literary responses George Eliot
Cross , concerned to protect and dignify her, chose the more sententious passages and excluded the spontaneous, trivial, and humorous remarks
Eliot, George. “Preface”. The George Eliot Letters, edited by Gordon S. Haight, Yale University Press, 1954, p. 1: ix - lxxvii.
xiv
from her personal writings, and presented an icon of Victorian moral earnestness; many...
Literary responses Laura Riding
Scholar Michael Sadleir gave a lunch party to celebrate the publication, and was impressed by LR 's ability to make her ancient characters real.
Friedmann, Elizabeth. A Mannered Grace. Persea Books, 2005.
295
He was agreeably surprised to learn that one of Riding's...
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 Geraldine Jewsbury
In Blackwood's in May 1855, Margaret Oliphant declared that we have seen few books so perfectly unsatisfactory as Constance Herbert.
qtd. in
Howe, Susanne. Geraldine Jewsbury: Her Life and Errors. George Allen and Unwin, 1935.
121
She criticized GJ for arranging her book around one woman's insanity, since the...
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...

Timeline

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Texts

Oliphant, Margaret. Merkland: A Story of Scottish Life. Colburn, 1851, 3 vols.
Oliphant, Margaret. “Miss Austen and Miss Mitford”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
107
, W. Blackwood, 1870, pp. 290-13.
Oliphant, Margaret. Miss Marjoribanks. W. Blackwood, 1866, 3 vols.
Oliphant, Margaret. Miss Marjoribanks. Garland, 1976.
Oliphant, Margaret. “Mrs. Craik”. Macmillan’s Magazine, Vol.
57
, No. November, pp. 81-5.
Oliphant, Margaret. “Novels”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
94
, pp. 168-83.
Oliphant, Margaret. “Novels”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
102
, W. Blackwood, pp. 257-80.
Oliphant, Margaret. Old Mr. Tredgold: A Story of Two Sisters. Longmans, Green, 1895.
Oliphant, Margaret. Oliphant: The Collected Writings of Margaret Oliphant (1828-1897). Adam Matthew, 1995, 4 parts (20 microfilm reels each) plus a guide.
Oliphant, Margaret. Oliphant: The Correspondence and Literary Manuscripts of Margaret Oliphant (1828-1897). Adam Matthew, 1997, 21 microfilm reels.
Oliphant, Margaret. Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland, of Sunnyside. Colburn, 1849, 3 vols.
Oliphant, Margaret. Phoebe, Junior: A Last Chronicle of Carlingford. Hurst and Blackett, 1876, 3 vols.
Macpherson, Gerardine. “Postscript”. Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jameson, edited by Margaret Oliphant, Longmans, Green, 1878.
Oliphant, Margaret. “Religious Memoirs”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
83
, No. June, W. Blackwood, pp. 703-18.
Oliphant, Margaret. Salem Chapel. W. Blackwood, 1863, 2 vols.
Oliphant, Margaret. Selected Stories of the Supernatural. Editor Gray, Margaret K., Scottish Academic Press, 1985.
Oliphant, Margaret. Sheridan. Macmillan, 1883.
Oliphant, Margaret. Sir Tom. Macmillan, 1884.
Oliphant, Margaret. Squire Arden. Hurst and Blackett, 1891, 3 vols.
Oliphant, Margaret. “The Anti-Marriage League”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, No. 159, pp. 135-49.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Athelings; or, The Three Gifts. W. Blackwood, 1857, 3 vols.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Autobiography and Letters of Mrs. M. O. W. Oliphant. Editor Walker, Annie Louisa, Blackwood, 1899.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant: the Complete Text. Editor Jay, Elisabeth, Oxford University Press, 1990.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Curate in Charge. Macmillan, 1876, 2 vols.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Days of My Life. An Autobiography. Hurst and Blackett, 1857, 3 vols.