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 Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Margaret Oliphant 's critique of the sensation novel in 1867 relied heavily on attacking MEB 's reputation. The best she would say was that some of Braddon's works deserved some of their success. Braddon's sole...
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...
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...
Literary responses Elizabeth Gaskell
Most reviews of North and South were positive, athough some criticized EG for what they saw as inaccuracies in her portrayal of northern industrial life. Chorley in the Athenæum called this one of the best...
Literary responses Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Margaret Oliphant , writing in Blackwood's, harshly criticized Barbara Leigh Smith 's Brief Summary . . . of the Laws Concerning Women.
Oliphant, Margaret. “The Laws Concerning Women”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
79
, W. Blackwood, Apr. 1856, pp. 379-87.
79: 379-87
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...
Literary responses Caroline Bowles
The Gentleman's Magazine's obituary for Bowles recalled that Chapters on Churchyardscontributed materially to establish her literary reputation and also showed powers of narrative fitting her for a popular and profitable branch of composition...

Timeline

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Texts

Oliphant, Margaret. The Greatest Heiress in England. Hurst and Blackett, 1879, 3 vols.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Ladies Lindores. Blackwood, 1883, 3 vols.
Oliphant, Margaret. “The Laws Concerning Women”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
79
, W. Blackwood, pp. 379-87.
Oliphant, Margaret. “The Life and Letters of George Eliot”. Lives of Victorian Literary Figures, edited by Gail Marshall et al., Pickering and Chatto, 2003, pp. 1: 139 - 80.
Wilson, Robert, 1846 - 1893, and Margaret Oliphant. The Life and Times of Queen Victoria: With which is incorporated The Domestic Life of the Queen, by Mrs. Oliphant. Cassell, 1900, 4 vols.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Life of Edward Irving. Blackwood, 1862.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Literary History of England in the End of the Eighteenth and Beginning of the Nineteenth Century. Macmillan, 1882, 3 vols.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Makers of Florence: Dante, Giotto, Savonarola; and Their City. Macmillan, 1876.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Marriage of Elinor. Macmillan, 1892, 3 vols.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Perpetual Curate. W. Blackwood, 1864, 3 vols.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Primrose Path: A Chapter in the Annals of the Kingdom of Fife. Hurst and Blackett, 1878, 3 vols.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Rector and The Doctor’s Family. Garland, 1975.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Rector; and, The Doctor’s Family. W. Blackwood, 1863.
Oliphant, Margaret. The Victorian Age of English Literature. Dodd, Mead, 1892.
Oliphant, Margaret, and Francis Romano Oliphant. The Victorian Age of English Literature. Percival and Company, 1892, 2 vols.
Oliphant, Margaret et al. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign. Hurst and Blackett, 1897.
Oliphant, Margaret. Zaidee: A Romance. Blackwood, 1856, 3 vols.