The Selected Works of Margaret Oliphant

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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

Sample pages

• 'Sensation Novels' + notes

Contents

Part I: Literary Criticism and Literary History

Volume 1: Literary Criticisim, 1854–69

Articles from Blackwood's Magazine 1854–69: 'Mary Russell Mitford' (June 1854); ‘Mr Thackeray and his Novels' (January 1855); ‘Bulwer' (February 1855); ‘Charles Dickens' (April 1855); ‘Modern Novelists Great and Small' (May 1855); ‘Modern Light Literature – Poetry' (February 1856); ‘Sydney Smith' (March 1856); ‘The Laws Concerning Women' (April 1856); ‘The Condition of Women' (February 1858); ‘The Byways of Literature' (August 1858); ‘Poetry' (July 1860); ‘Social Science' (December 1860); ‘A Merry Christmas' (January 1861); ‘Sensation Novels' (May 1862); ‘David Wingate' (July 1862); ‘John Wilson' (December 1862); ‘Novels' (August 1863); ‘Tara' (November 1863); ‘The Great Unrepresented' (September 1866); ‘Novels' (September 1867); The Latest Lawgiver' (June 1868); 'Charles Reade's Novels' (October 1869). From the Edinburgh Review 1869: 'The Subjection of Women etc' (October 1869)

Volume 2: Literary Criticism, 1870–6

From Blackwood's Magazine 1870: ‘Miss Austen and Miss Mitford' (March 1870). From the Edinburgh Review 1870: ‘The Epic of Arthur' (April 1870). From Blackwood's Magazine 1870–1: 'New Books 1' (May 1870); 'New Books 2' (August 1870); 'New Books 3' (November 1870); New Books 4' (January 1871); 'New Books 5' (April 1871); 'Charles Dickens' (June 1871); 'William Cowper' (June 1871); 'Walter Scott' (August 1871); 'William Wordsworth' (September 1871); 'American Books' (October 1871); 'Samuel Taylor Coleridge' (November 1871). From the Edinburgh Review 1872: 'Mr Browning's Balaustion' (January 1872). From Blackwood's Magazine 1872–3: 'Robert Burns' (February 1872); 'Percy Bysshe Shelley' (April 1872); 'Lord Byron' (July 1872); 'New Books 11' (December 1872); 'Lord Lytton' (March 1873); 'Kenelm Chillingly' (May 1873); 'New Books 13' (September 1873); 'New Books 14' (November 1873). From the Spectator 1874: 'The Rights of Women' (March 1874). From Blackwood's Magazine 1874: 'Two Cities – Two Books' (July 1874); 'New Books 17' (August 1874); 'Mr Thackeray's Sketches' (February 1876)

Volume 3: Literary Criticism, 1877–86

From Blackwood's Magazine 1877–9: ‘New Books 20' (February 1877); ‘Harriet Martineau' (April 1877); ‘The Opium Eater' (December 1877); ‘New Books 21' (March 1878); ‘New Books 22' (June 1878); ‘Two Ladies' (February 1879); ‘Hamlet' (April 1879); ‘New Books 23' (July 1879). From Fraser's Magazine 1880: ‘The Grievances of Women' (May 1880). From Blackwood's Magazine 1880: ‘New Novels' (September 1880). From Macmillan's Magazine 1881: ‘Thomas Carlyle' (April 1881). From Blackwood's Magazine 1882–3: ‘Recent Novels' (March 1882); ‘Democracy' (May 1882); ‘American Literature in England' (January 1883). From Good Words 1883: ‘Anthony Trollope' (February 1883).From the Contemporary Review 1883: ‘Mrs Carlyle' (May 1883). From Blackwood's Magazine 1884: ‘Three Young Novelists' (September 1884). From the Spectator 1884: ‘Are Women a "Represented Class"?' (November 1884). From the Edinburgh Review 1885: ‘The Life and Letters of George Eliot' (April 1885). From the Spectator 1886: ‘Hurrish’ (January 1886). From Blackwood’s Magazine 1886: ‘New Novels’ (December 1886)

Volume 4: The Victorian Age of English Literature (1892)

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

Part II: Autobiography, Biography and Historical Writing

Volume 5: Autobiography, Biography and Historical Writing (1887–96)

General Introduction

Articles from 'The Old School Saloon', Blackwood's Magazine (1887–92); 'The Rev W Lucas Collins', Blackwood's Magazine (1887); 'Mrs Craik', Macmillan's Magazine (1887); Articles from 'A Fireside Commentary', St James's Gazette (January–June 1888); 'A Forthcoming Book and its Author', St James's Gazette (1888); Articles from 'A Commentary from an Easy-Chair', the Spectator (1889–90); 'The Seen and the Unseen', the Spectator (1896); 'Tennyson', Blackwood's Magazine (1892); Articles from 'Things in General', Atlanta (1893–4); 'The Letters of Sir Walter Scott', Blackwood's Magazine (1894); Articles from 'The Looker-on', Blackwood's Magazine (1894–6); 'The Anti-Marriage League', Blackwood's Magazine (1896); 'John Gibson Lockhart', Blackwood's Magazine (1896)

Volume 6: The Autobiography and Letters of Mrs M O W Oliphant (1899)

The Autobiography and Letters of Mrs M O W Oliphant (1899)

Appendix A: Illustrations from the 1899 edition
Appendix B: Diary entry for 1887
Appendix C: Diary entry for 1888
Appendix D: Diary entry for 1896

Volume 7: Writings on Biography (1862–97)

Excerpts from The Life of Edward Irving, Minister of the National Scotch Church, London (1862); 'The Life of Her Majesty the Queen' (1880); 'The Ethics of Biography' (1883); 'The Sisters Brontë' (1897)

Volume 8: Four Biographies: Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Thomas Chalmers, John Tulloch, Laurence Oliphant (1883–93)

Sheridan (1883); Thomas Chalmers, Preacher, Philosopher and Statesman (1893); Memoir of the Life of John Tulloch (1888); Memoir of the Life of Laurence Oliphant, and of Alice Oliphant, His Wife (1891)

Volume 9: Historical Writing (1887–91)

The Makers of Venice (1887); 'Margaret of Scotland, Atheling – Queen and Saint' (1890); ‘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

Leaflets

• Selected Works of Margaret Oliphant: colour leaflet

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