Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Margaret Oliphant
-
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).
CG
said that Bentley
paid her three hundred pounds for Cecil, but then made her refund sixty on the grounds that the novel was not saleable (in which he was wrong).
Carson-Batchelor, Rhonda Lea. Margaret Oliphant: Gender, Identity, and Value in the Victorian Periodical Press. University of Alberta, 1998.
208
According to...
Literary responses
Julia Stretton
Charlotte Yonge
, writing in Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign, published in 1897 by Margaret Oliphant
and others, grouped JS
with Lady Georgiana Fullerton
and Anne Manning
as similar in the purity and...
Colby, Vineta. The Singular Anomaly: Women Novelists of the Nineteenth Century. New York University Press, 1970.
150
Sales were good, but there were some hostile reviews...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Sewell
Her autobiography has received the most recent critical attention of her writings. Critic Valerie Sanders
compares it with other autobiographies (by Harriet Martineau
, Fanny Kemble
and Margaret Oliphant
), and notes ES
's conflicted...
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, 1990.
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
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...
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
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.
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, 1950, 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
, 1998, pp. 153-66.
163
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, 1890.
223
Notwithstanding her prolific output and popularity as a novelist, MA
's work has passed into...
