Book Description
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Book Description
As an expatriate Scots woman, Mrs Margaret Oliphant (1828-97) started her prolific and accomplished writing career at three removes from the centre of Victorian literary life.Widowed early, and left with not only her own children, but two brothers, a nephew and two nieces to support, she became keenly aware of the discrepancy between society's assumptions about woman's role and her own position as a female breadwinner in the male-dominated world of nineteenth-century publishing.Out of the contrast between her wryly ironic view of life and the conventions of Victorian fiction came the disconcerting questioning of accepted ideologies of the family, religious orthodoxy and a woman's place in society that characterizes her writing.Mrs Oliphant: A Fiction to Herself paints an often surprising picture of the professional Victorian woman writer.By choosing to interweave the life and the work of Mrs Oliphant, Elisabeth Jay's lucid and comprehensive study raises for consideration the way in which a particular woman writer perceived her own life, and the wider question of whether women writers have been well-served by the mythological structures of male biography.'Elisabeth Jay has drawn upon Oliphant's wide-ranging writing in numerous modes, to give a comprehensive and often surprising portrait of the professional Victorian woman writer.This study of Oliphant's career as a professional Victorian writer, of her critical and intellectual interests, and the extraordinary way in which she managed fiction and journalism over her career, will cast a new light on the period. Elaine Showalter, Professor of English, Princeton Univesity ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Scholarly study based on personal interest
Margaret Oliphant (1828-1897) was Scotch by nationality.She published her first novel in 1849 at age twenty one and by the end of her life had nearly 100 novels to her credit.Oliphant also published books of history, biography and the supernatural, as well as innumerable periodical articles. She was a leader among Victorian novelists, though she never attained the status or financial success of some of the major 19th century English novelists.Critics usually consider her "Chronicles of Carlingford" series of novels as her most enduring fiction.Margaret Oliphant was widowed early in life.From her youth to the last years of her old age she was driven to write by the necessity of making money to support a never-ending procession of family members and relatives who were either unfortunate or were never-do-wells, as well as her own somewhat undisciplined use of money.Margaret Oliphant has long fascinated me for her sheer perseverance and productivity.The author of this work, Elisabeth Jay, brings to this study a personal interest on a scholarly foundation. The volume is well documented with notes and bibliography.Jay had earlier published her edition of Margaret Oliphant's Autobiography and Letters. ... Read more

Book Description
Margaret Oliphant was a prolific and versatile writer, biographer, and reviewer whose career spanned the latter half of the nineteenth century. Author of essays such as “The Condition of Women” and “The Grievances of Women,” she was also a prominent voice on the “woman question.” Oliphant wrote her autobiographical manuscripts over a 30-year period. After she died, her two editors recomposed their relative's material into a conventional memoir and suppressed more than a quarter of it. Based on the original manuscripts, the Broadview edition restores the missing text. The result is a more intimate portrait of a woman capable of scathing irony, but one also expressing the depths of her anger and grief at the tragedies that beset her. Her autobiographical musings were each promoted by her urge to think through some difficult turning points in a life where she had to struggle to combine the role of professional writer and artist with that of mother and breadwinner for! an ever growing household of dependents. ... Read more