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 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 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 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.
25
It was also widely reviewed. In her 1867 attack on the sensation novel, Margaret Oliphant acknowledged that Cometh Up...
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...
Occupation Anna Maria Hall
AMH provided help and support to many young writers, including Dinah Craik and Margaret Oliphant .
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.
Occupation Dante Alighieri
Dante's known poetry begins with La vita nuova (The New Life in English), a work in both verse and prose about his famous love for the married Beatrice, which was probably finished by 1293...
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...
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...
Publishing Dinah Mulock Craik
Her novels were rapidly reprinted in inexpensive editions in Britain and in the United States, indicating that she was gaining a substantial audience.
Mitchell, Sally. Dinah Mulock Craik. Twayne.
36-7
She attempted unsuccessfully to get better terms from her publisher,...
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
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...
Reception Jane Welsh Carlyle
In response to Froude 's critique of theCarlyles ' marriage in Reminiscences, Margaret Oliphant published a glowing account of her friendship with the couple in Macmillan's Magazine.
Carlyle, Jane Welsh. “Editorial Materials”. Jane Welsh Carlyle: A New Selection of Her Letters, edited by Trudy Bliss, Victor Gollancz, p. various pages.
345
Trela, Dale J. “Margaret Oliphant’s ‘bravest words yet spoken’ on Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle”. Carlyle Studies Annual, Vol.
18
, pp. 153-66.
163
Reception Ouida
Within a few years of her first novel's publication, Ouida had attained some celebrity as a writer, but not all the attention she received was positive. While her sales were strong, she was attacked for...
Reception Mrs Alexander
In 1890 George Bainton called her fiction spirited and dramatic, written with animation, force, and vivid painting of character.
Bainton, George, editor. The Art of Authorship. J. Clarke.
223
Notwithstanding her prolific output and popularity as a novelist, MA 's work has passed into...
Reception Dinah Mulock Craik
The book was immediately successful in England and the United States.
Kaplan, Cora, and Dinah Mulock Craik. “Introduction”. Olive; and, The Half-Caste, Oxford University Press, p. ix - xxv.
xi
Sally Mitchell remarks that it produced a huge expansion in the audience for fiction: The book helped to overcome the resistance to fiction...

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