Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant
(April 4, 1828-June 25, 1897)
(No - that's not a typo - her name contains two Oliphants).
Margaret O. Wilson was born in Midlothian, Scotland. She derived her love of literature from her mother, and began writing early. Her family belonged to the Free Church of Scotland, a radical sect of Presbyterianism (the dominant religion of Scotland). Her mother and elder brother also enjoyed "political and radical" conversation, and the family was active in seeking the revocation of the Corn Law, a piece of legislation that favored wealthy landowners and, by keeping the cost of food artificially high, threatened the welfare of the poor. In short, Oliphant was raised with progressive political values, which presumably helped her to become the independent and self-sufficient professional that circumstances eventually obliged her to be.
In 1849, Oliphant's first novel (Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland) was published; and from then on, she wrote at a furious rate, usually to support herself and her extended needy family. "During the next forty-eight years Oliphant produced nearly one hundred novels, more than one hundred nonfiction books, and some three hundred periodical pieces" (LRC).
Oliphant married her cousin, Frank Oliphant, in 1852. He was a painter and stained-glass designer, who was never financially successful. He and Oliphant enjoyed a bohemian lifestyle, but she quickly became the primary breadwinner.
The year 1954 initiated an unrelenting series of deaths for Oliphant. Her mother died in September, and her 2nd infant daughter in the following February. Her first son died the day after his birth in November of the same year. Three years later, she lost another son, this one 6 weeks old. In 1859, Frank died of TB in Rome, leaving Oliphant to care for their three surviving children (1 born posthumously) in a foreign country, and to dicharge £1000 in debt.
These years saw the creation of Oliphant's tremendously successful Carlingford novels, four loosely related novels set in the fictional vicinity of Carlingford. In the midst of this literary activity, Oliphant's only daughter, Maggie, died in Rome and was buried next to her father (1864).
For the next thirty years, Oliphant was a career woman and professional writer who raised and educated her two sons, as well as a nephew, and assisted various family members. By 1894, most of those family members (including her sons) were dead, and Oliphant's own health began to fail. She died in 1897, writing until the end.
Oliphant wrote constantly to keep the proverbial wolf from the door, and was immensely popular. In addition to novels and short stories, she published a constrant stream of articles on a range of subjects, from book reviews to politics. Needless to say, this breathless pace of output affected the quality of Oliphant's writings. Many critics and partisans of Oliphant believe that her sheer volume is the main factor that has prevented the novelist from receiving much contemporary attention. The amount of material that the scholar must sift through, and the quantity that is sub-standard, is daunting. Nonetheless, her best writings are witty, perceptive, and elegant, and she represent the closest link to Jane Austen's narrative style, representing close and humorous scrutiny of a provincial location, and featuring strong and compelling heroines; as her works are increasingly studied, the canonical status of Oliphant's best works is consolidated. Although she has been superficially classified as an anti-feminist based on a few of her articles, Oliphant's novels indicate otherwise, and her clever and capable heroines suggest women's ability to fulfill a larger role in public life than they were generally granted in the 19th century.
Factual information adapted from: Rhonda Batchelor, "Margaret (Oliphant Wilson) Oliphant," in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 190: British Reform Writers, 1832-1914 . A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Gary Kelly, University of Alberta and Edd Applegate, Middle Tennessee State University. The Gale Group, 1998, pp. 232-244.
