OLIPHANT, MARGARET OLIPHANT (1828-1897)

This article appears in Volume V20, Page 84 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: NUM-ORC

OLIPHANT, MARGARET OLIPHANT (1828-1897) , British novelist and historical writer, daughter of Francis Wilson, was born at Wallyford, near Musselburgh, Midlothian, in 1828. Her childhood was spent at Lasswade (near Dalkeith), Glasgow and Liverpool. As a girl she constantly occupied herself with literary experiments, and in 1849 published her first novel, Passages in the Life of Mrs Margaret Maitland. It dealt with the Scottish Free Church

movement

MOVEMENT

, with which Mr and Mrs Wilson both sympathized, and had some success. This she followed up in 1851 with Caleb Field, and in the same year met Major Blackwood in Edinburgh, and was invited by him to contribute to the famous Blackwood's Magazine. The connexion thus early commenced lasted during her whole lifetime, and she contributed considerably more than too articles to its pages. In May 1852 she married her cousin, Frank Wilson Oliphant, at Birkenhead, and settled at Harrington Square, in London. Her husband was an artist, principally in stained glass. He had very delicate health, and two of their children died in infancy, while the father himself developed alarming symptoms of consumption. For the sake of his health they moved in January 1859 to Florence, and thence 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
children by her own literary activity. 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 daughter 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. 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

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of the gravest troubles. The ambitions she cherished for her sons were unfulfilled. Cyril Francis, the elder, died in 189o, leaving a Life of Alfred de Musset, incorporated in his mother's Foreign Classics for English Readers. The younger, Frank, collaborated with her in the Victorian Age of English Literature and won a position at the British Museum, but was rejected by the doctors. He died in 1894. With the last of her children lost to her, she had but little further

interest

INTEREST

in life. Her health steadily declined, and she died at

Wimbledon

WIMBLEDON

, on the 25th of June 1897.
In the course of her long struggle with circumstances, Mrs Oliphant produced more than 120 separate 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

HEPBURN, SIR JOHN (c. 1598-1636)

(1854), Lilliesleaf (1855), The Laird of Norlaw (1858) and a

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of stories with the collective title of The Chronicles of Carlingford, which, originally appearing in Blackwood's Magazine (1862-1865), did much to widen her reputation. This series included Salem Chapel (1863), The

Rector

RECTOR (Lat. for " ruler," " guide," &c., from regere, " rule ")

; and the

Doctor

DOCTOR (Lat. for " teacher ")

's Family (1863), The Perpetual Curate (1864) and Miss Marjoribanks (1866). Other successful novels were Madonna Mary (1867), Squire Arden (1871), He that will not when he may (188o), Hester (1 883) ,Kirsteen (189o), The Marriage of Elinor (1892) and The Ways of Life (1897). Her tendency to mysticism found expression in The Beleaguered City (188o) and A Little Pilgrim in the Unseen (1882). Her biographies of Edward Irving (1862) and Laurence Oliphant (1892), together with her life of Sheridan in the "English Men of Letters " (1883), have vivacity and a sympathetic

touch

TOUCH (derived through Fr. toucher from a common Teutonic and Indo-Germanic root, cf. " tug," " tuck," O. H. Ger. zucchen, to twitch or draw)

. She also wrote historical and

critical

CRITICAL (in alphabetical order of authors)

works of considerable variety, including Historical Sketches of the Reign of George II. (1869), The Makers of Florence (1876), A Literary History of England from i790 to 1825 (1882), The Makers of Venice (1887), Royal Edinburgh (189o), Jerusalem (1891) and The Makers of Modern Rome(1895), while at the time of her death she was still occupied upon Annals of a Publishing

House

, a record of the progress and achievement of the firm of Blackwood, with which she had been so long and honourably connected.
Iler Autobiography and Letters, which present a touching picture of her domestic anxieties, appeared in 1899.

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