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 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...
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...
Literary responses Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Margaret Oliphant , however, disparaged Aurora Floyd in Novels, her Blackwood's attack of September 1867 on the sensation novel, a school of which she took MEB to be the leader. Recognising that the ignorant...
Literary responses Sarah Grand
Margaret Oliphant , reviewing the novel for Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1889, described it as the expression of a great many thoughts of the moment, and of a desire which is stronger than it ever...
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 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, 1984, p. vii - xvi.
xvi
Margaret Oliphant criticised the author in Blackwood's for asking readers to surrender all our...
Literary responses Mary Elizabeth Braddon
His article, Sensation Novelists: Miss Braddon, which covered seven novels she had published since 1862, made a famous personal attack in asserting that her work evidenced familiarity with a very low type of female...
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...
Literary responses Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Informal and critical responses to The Doctor's Wife during its serialisation caused MEB to revise the conclusion. She admitted to Bulwer-Lytton in a letter dated 7 September 1864 that I am so apt to be...
Literary responses Mary Elizabeth Braddon
They were in time to reap the full force of Margaret Oliphant 's disapproval in her anti-sensation-novel article in Blackwood's. She found it deeply shocking that leading literary journals were praising Rupert Godwin...
Literary responses Thomas Hardy
Early reviews were good, the Athenæum prophesying that Tess would rank high among the achievements of the Victorian novel, and the Pall Mall Gazette calling it the strongest English novel of many years.
qtd. in
Hardy, Thomas. “General Introduction”. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, edited by Juliet Grindle and Simon Gatrell, Clarendon Press, 1983, pp. 1-103.
16
Margaret Oliphant

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.