The Selected Works of Margaret Oliphant

---

General Editors: Joanne Shattock and Elisabeth Jay
Volume Editors: Joanne Shattock, Joanne Wilkes, Valerie Sanders and Marion Shaw (Part I); Linda Peterson, Trev Lynn Broughton, David Jasper, Francis O'Gorman and Tess Cosslett (Part II)

The Pickering Masters

Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant (1828-97) had a wide-ranging and prolific literary career that spanned almost fifty years. She wrote some 98 novels, over fifty short stories, twenty-five works of non-fiction, including biographies and historic guides to European cities, and more than three hundred periodical articles. As the self-styled ‘general utility woman’ for Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, often contributing both fiction and literary reviews to the same issue, she became a major critical voice for her generation. Her influence, usually cast on the side of ‘the common reader’, was such that it provoked fellow novelists such as Anthony Trollope, Henry James and Thomas Hardy to savage fictional portraits by way of retaliation.

The scholarly interest that her work now receives is hampered by difficulty in accessing the full range of her oeuvre: whilst her most famous fictional series, ‘The Chronicles of Carlingford’, together with a handful of her tales of the supernatural, have gone in and out of print in recent years, the bulk of her fiction and critical writing remains uncollected.

This is the most ambitious scholarly critical edition of Oliphant’s work ever undertaken. The sheer scale of her output has meant that selection is essential, but the edition aims to convey the range and variety of her work in both fiction and non-fictional genres. It will bring together for the first time her critical writing and other journalism for Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, the Spectator, the St James’s Gazette, as well as her articles in the Contemporary Review, the Edinburgh, and Macmillan’s Magazine. Much of her fiction, including full length novels, short stories and novellas, was first published in periodicals: in Blackwood’s, the Cornhill, Longman’s Magazine, Macmillan’s, and Good Words. Few of her manuscripts survive, but substantive textual work remains to be done on the editorial changes made between periodical serialization and first appearance in volume form. The edition will place particular emphasis on her shorter fiction, much of which will be reprinted for the first time, and on her work as a biographer, historian, and literary historian.

• full editorial apparatus including textual variants between serialization and publication
• first time most of Oliphant’s non-fiction writing has been reprinted
• the most wide-ranging critical edition of Oliphant’s works ever undertaken

Contents

Part I: Literary Criticism and Literary History

Volume 1: Literary Criticisim, 1854–69

'Mary Russell Mitford', Blackwood's Magazine (1854); ‘Mr Thackeray and his Novels', Blackwood's Magazine (1855); ‘Bulwer', Blackwood's Magazine (1855); ‘Charles Dickens', Blackwood's Magazine (1855); ‘Modern Novelists Great and Small', Blackwood's Magazine (1855); ‘Modern Light Literature – Poetry', Blackwood's Magazine (1856); ‘Sydney Smith', Blackwood's Magazine (1856); ‘The Laws Concerning Women', Blackwood's Magazine (1856); ‘The Condition of Women', Blackwood's Magazine (1858); ‘The Byways of Literature', Blackwood's Magazine (1858); ‘Poetry', Blackwood's Magazine (1860); ‘Social Science', Blackwood's Magazine (1860); ‘A Merry Christmas', Blackwood's Magazine (1861); ‘John Wilson', Blackwood's Magazine (1862); ‘Sensation Novels', Blackwood's Magazine (1862); ‘David Wingate', Blackwood's Magazine (1862); ‘Novels', Blackwood's Magazine (1863); ‘Tara', Blackwood's Magazine (1863); ‘The Great Unrepresented', Blackwood's Magazine (1866); ‘Novels', Blackwood's Magazine (1867); The Latest Lawgiver', Blackwood's Magazine (1868); 'Charles Reade's Novels', Blackwood's Magazine (1869); 'Rev of 'The Subjection of Women etc', Edinburgh Review (1869)

Volume 2: Literary Criticism, 1870–76

‘Miss Austen and Miss Mitford', Blackwood's Magazine (1870); ‘The Epic of Arthur', Edinburgh Review (1870); ‘New Books' 1, Blackwood's Magazine (1870); ‘New Books' 2, Blackwood's Magazine (1870); ‘New Books' 3, Blackwood's Magazine (1870); ‘New Books' 4, Blackwood's Magazine (1871); ‘New Books' 5, Blackwood's Magazine (1871); ‘Charles Dickens', Blackwood's Magazine (1871); ‘A Century of Great Poets, from 1750 Downwards 1: William Cowper', Blackwood's Magazine (1871); ‘A Century of Great Poets… 11: Walter Scott', Blackwood's Magazine (1871); ‘A Century of Great Poets… 111: William Wordsworth', Blackwood's Magazine (1871); ‘American Books', Blackwood's Magazine (1871); ‘A Century of Great Poets… 1V: Samuel Taylor Coleridge', Blackwood's Magazine (1871); ‘Mr Browning's Balaustion', Edinburgh Review (1872); ‘A Century of Great Poets … V: Robert Burns', Blackwood's Magazine (1872); ‘A Century of Great Poets…V1: Percy Bysshe Shelley', Blackwood's Magazine (1872); ‘A Century of Great Poets…V11: Lord Byron', Blackwood's Magazine (1872); ‘New Books' 11, Blackwood's Magazine (1872); ‘Lord Lytton', Blackwood's Magazine (1873); ‘Kenelm Chillingly', Blackwood's Magazine (1873); ‘New Books' 13, Blackwood's Magazine (1873); ‘New Books' 14, Blackwood's Magazine (1873); ‘The Rights of Women', The Spectator (1874); ‘Two Cities – Two Books', Blackwood's Magazine (1874); ‘New Books' 17, Blackwood's Magazine (1874); ‘Mr Thackeray's Sketches', Blackwood's Magazine (1876)

Volume 3: Literary Criticism, 1877–86

‘New Books’ 20, Blackwood's Magazine (1877); ‘Harriet Martineau', Blackwood's Magazine (1877); ‘The Opium Eater', Blackwood's Magazine (1877); ‘New Books', Blackwood's Magazine (1878); ‘New Books' 22, Blackwood's Magazine (1878); ‘Two Ladies', Blackwood's Magazine (1879); ‘Hamlet', Blackwood's Magazine (1879); ‘New Books' 23, Blackwood's Magazine (1879); ‘The Grievances of Women', Fraser's Magazine (1880); ‘New Novels', Blackwood's Magazine (1880); ‘Thomas Carlyle', Macmillan's Magazine (1881); ‘Recent Novels', Blackwood's Magazine (1882); ‘Democracy', Blackwood's Magazine (1882); ‘American Literature in England', Blackwood's Magazine (1883); ‘Anthony Trollope', Good Words (1883); ‘Mrs Carlyle', Contemporary Review (1883); ‘Three Young Novelists', Blackwood's Magazine (1884); ‘Are Women a 'Represented Class?' The Spectator (1884); ‘The Life and Letters of George Eliot', Edinburgh Review (1885); ‘Hurrish,’ The Spectator (1886); ‘New Novels,’ Blackwood’s Magazine (1886)

Volume 4:The Victorian Age of English Literature

Mrs Oliphant and F R Oliphant, The Victorian Age of English Literature (1892)

Part II: Autobiography, Biography and Historical Writing

Mrs Harry Coghill (ed), Autobiography and Letters of Mrs O W Oliphant; Mrs Oliphant, The Life of Edward Irving (1862); Mrs Oliphant, 'The Sisters Brontë' from Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign: a Book of Appreciations (1897) [excerpt]; Mrs Oliphant, 'The Life of the Queen', The Graphic Summer (1880); Mrs Oliphant, Memoir of John Tulloch Edinburgh and London (1888) [excerpts]; Mrs Oliphant, Memoir of the Life of Laurence Oliphant and of Alice Oliphant, his Wife by Margaret Oliphant W Oliphant (1891) [excerpts]; Mrs Oliphant, Sheridan, from English Men of Letters series (1883) [excerpts]; Mrs Oliphant, Thomas Chalmers. Preacher, Philosopher and Statesman (1893) [excerpts]; Mrs Oliphant, The Makers of Venice. Doges, Conquerors, Painters and Men of Letters (1887); Mrs Oliphant, Royal Edinburgh, Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets, Part 1, 'Margaret of Scotland, Atheling - Queen and Saint' (1890) [excerpt]; Mrs Oliphant, ‘Introduction’ from Jerusalem, the Holy City (1891)

Part III: Shorter Fiction

Novellas: A Rose In June (Cornhill Mar – June 1874); The Curate in Charge (Macmillan’s Aug 1875 – Jan 1876); Lady Car (Longman’s March – July 1889); Short Stories: A Beleaguered City; Earthbound; The Open Door; The Lady’s Walk; Old Lady Mary; Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamond; Mr Sandford; The Library Window; The Land of Darkness

Parts IV and V: Major Novels

At His Gates (1872); The Ladies Lindores (Blackwood’s Apr 1882 – May 1883); Hester (1883); The Wizard’s Son (1884); Kirsteen (Macmillan’s Aug 1889 – 1890); Old Mr Tredgold (Longman’s June 1895 – May 1896)

Part VI: The Chronicles of Carlingford

The Executor (Blackwood’s May 1861); The Rector’ (Blackwood’s Sept 1861); The Doctor’s Family (Blackwood’s Oct 1861 – Jan 1862); Salem Chapel (Blackwood’s Feb 1862 – Jan 1863); The Perpetual Curate (Blackwood’s June 1863 – Sept 1864); Miss Marjoribanks (Blackwood’s Feb 1865 – May 1866); Phoebe Junior (1876)

Related titles

• Blackwood's Magazine, 1817–1825 : Selections from Maga's Infancy
• Lives of the Great Romantics, Part III : Godwin, Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by their Contemporaries
• Lives of Victorian Literary Figures, Part I : George Eliot, Charles Dickens and Alfred, Lord Tennyson by their Contemporaries
• Lives of Victorian Literary Figures, Part II : The Brownings, the Brontës and the Rossettis
• Lives of Victorian Literary Figures, Part III : Elizabeth Gaskell, the Carlyles and John Ruskin
• Lives of Victorian Literary Figures, Part V : Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Wilkie Collins and William Thackeray by their contemporaries
• Lives of Victorian Literary Figures, Part VI : Lewis Carroll, Robert Louis Stevenson and Algernon Charles Swinburne by their Contemporaries
• The Correspondence and Journals of the Thackeray Family
• Varieties of Women's Sensation Fiction, 1855–1890

Return to top