Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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).
The idea of self-improvement through writing and reading correlates to the strong emphasis in EG
's fiction on education and the impact of environment. This was undoubtedly influenced by a Unitarian intellectual background indebted to...
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...
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, p. 1: ix - lxxvii.
xiv
from her personal writings, and presented an icon of Victorian moral earnestness; many...
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...
Textual Features
Ella Hepworth Dixon
Here she combats the belief that modern women are rejecting marriage because they have so far unsexed themselves as to have lost the primordial instinct for conjugal life altogether. She points out the practical reasons...
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...
Textual Features
Ella D'Arcy
Both men are treated with striking ambivalence (an ambivalence reminiscent of Margaret Oliphant
, whose work it is not certain that D'Arcy knew). Le Mesurier clearly behaved badly, but he truly loved Lily. Shergold aimed...
After the death of her friend Margaret Oliphant
on 25 June 1897, BWC
was so angered by a somewhat grudging appreciation that she countered with an eloquent and noble tribute.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. The Merry Wives of Westminster. Macmillan.
