Margaret Oliphant

Margaret Oliphant, from the frontispiece of A Literary History of England from 1760 to 1825

Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant (née Margaret Oliphant Wilson) (4 April 1828 – 25 June 1897), was a Scottish novelist and historical writer, who usually wrote as Mrs. Oliphant.

Life

The daughter of Francis W. Wilson (c.1788–1858), a clerk, and his wife, Margaret Oliphant (c.1789–1854), she was born at Wallyford, near Musselburgh, East Lothian, and spent her childhood at Lasswade (near Dalkeith), Glasgow and Liverpool. She constantly experimented with writing as a girl and in 1849 had her first novel published: Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland. This dealt with the Scottish Free Church movement, with which Mr. and Mrs. Wilson both sympathised, and met with some success. It was by Caleb Field in 1851, the year in which she met the publisher William Blackwood in Edinburgh and was invited to contribute to the famous Blackwood's Magazine. The connection was to last for her whole lifetime, during which she contributed well over 100 articles, including, for instance, a critique of the character of Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter.

In May 1852, she married her cousin, Frank Wilson Oliphant, at Birkenhead, and settled at Harrington Square in London. An artist working mainly in stained glass, her husband had delicate health, and three of their six children died in infancy,^[1] while the father himself developed alarming symptoms of consumption. For the sake of his health they moved in January 1859 to Florence, and then to Rome, where Frank Oliphant died. His wife, left almost entirely without resources, returned to England and took up the burden of supporting her three remaining children by her own literary activity.

Margaret Oliphant portrayed in 1881 by Frederick Augustus Sandys.

She had now become a popular writer, and worked with amazing industry to sustain her position. Unfortunately, her home life was full of sorrow and disappointment. In January 1864 her only remaining daughter Maggie died in Rome, and was buried in her father's grave. Her brother, who had emigrated to Canada, was shortly afterwards involved in financial ruin, and Mrs. Oliphant offered a home to him and his children, and added their support to her already heavy responsibilities.

In 1866 she settled at Windsor to be near her sons who were being educated at Eton. That year, her second cousin, Annie Louisa Walker, came to live with her as a companion-housekeeper.^[2] This was her home for the rest of her life, and for more than thirty years she pursued a varied literary career with courage scarcely broken by a series of the gravest troubles. The ambitions she cherished for her sons were unfulfilled. Cyril Francis, the elder, died in 1890, leaving a Life of Alfred de Musset, incorporated in his mother's Foreign Classics for English Readers, The younger, Francis (whom she called "Cecco"), collaborated with her in the Victorian Age of English Literature and won a position at the British Museum, but was rejected by Sir Andrew Clark, a famous physician. Cecco died in 1894. With the last of her children lost to her, she had but little further interest in life. Her health steadily declined, and she died at Wimbledon, London, on 25 June 1897.

In the 1880s she was the literary mentor of the Irish novelist Emily Lawless.

Works

Oliphant, during an often difficult life, wrote more than 120 works, including novels, books of travel and description, histories, and volumes of literary criticism.

Among the best known of her works of fiction are:

• Adam Graeme (1852)
• Magdalen Hepburn (1854)
• Lilliesleaf (1855)
• The Laird of Norlaw (1858)
• The Chronicles of Carlingford in Blackwood's Magazine (1862–1865), republished as:
  • Salem Chapel (1863)
  • The Rector
  • Doctor's Family (1863)
  • The Perpetual Curate (1864)
  • Miss Marjoribanks (1866)
  • Phoebe Junior (1876)
• Madonna Mary (1867)
• Squire Arden (1871)
• He That Will Not When He May (1880)
• Hester (1883)
• Kirsteen (1890)
• The Marriage of Elinor (1892)
• The Ways of Life (1897)
• The Beleaguered City (1880)
• A Little Pilgrim in the Unseen (1882)

Her biographies of Edward Irving (1862) and her cousin Laurence Oliphant (1892), together with her life of Sheridan in the English Men of Letters series (1883), show vivacity and a sympathetic touch. She also wrote a biography of the Scottish theologian John Tulloch.

Her varied historical and critical works include:

• Historical Sketches of the Reign of George II (1869)
• The Makers of Florence (1876)
• A Literary History of England from 1760 to 1825 (1882)
• The Makers of Venice (1887)
• Royal Edinburgh (1890)
• Jerusalem (1891)
• The Makers of Modern Rome (1895)

At the time of her death, Oliphant was still working on Annals of a Publishing House, a record of the progress and achievement of the firm of Blackwood, with which she had been so long connected. Her Autobiography and Letters, which present a touching picture of her domestic anxieties, appeared in 1899. Only parts were written with a wider audience in mind: she had originally intended the Autobiography for her son, but he died before she had finished it.^[3]

Revival of interest

Interest in Mrs. Oliphant's work died down in the 20th century. Only in the mid-1980s was there a small-scale revival led by the publishers Alan Sutton^[4] and Virago Press, centred on the Carlingford series and some similarities of subject-matter with the work of Anthony Trollope.^[5]

The next move came from Penguin Books in 1999, with an edition of Miss Marjoribanks (1866).^[6] Hester (1873) was reissued in 2003 by Oxford World's Classics.^[7] In 2007–2009, the Gloucester publisher Dodo Press reprinted half a dozen of Mrs. Oliphant's works. In 2010, both the British Library and Persephone Books reissued The Mystery of Mrs. Blencarrow (1890), in the latter case with the novella Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamund (1886).^[8]

References

External links

• Works by Margaret Oliphant at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Margaret Oliphant at Microsoft Books Live Search
• Margaret Oliphant at The Victorian Web
• The Margaret Oliphant Site
• Basketful of Fragments: Krystyna Weinstein's 'fictional autobiography' of Margaret Oliphant
• Archival material relating to Margaret Oliphant listed at the UK National Register of Archives