Margaret Oliphant - Works

Works

Oliphant, during an often difficult life, wrote more than 120 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 (1854)
  • Lilliesleaf (1855)
  • The Laird of Norlaw (1858)
  • The Chronicles of Carlingford in Blackwood's Magazine (1862–1865), republished as:
    • Salem Chapel (1863)
    • The Rector
    • Doctor's Family (1863)
    • The Perpetual Curate (1864)
    • Miss Marjoribanks (1866)
    • Phoebe Junior (1876)
  • Madonna Mary (1867)
  • Squire Arden (1871)
  • He That Will Not When He May (1880)
  • Hester (1883)
  • Kirsteen (1890)
  • The Marriage of Elinor (1892)
  • The Ways of Life (1897)
  • The Beleaguered City (1880)
  • A Little Pilgrim in the Unseen (1882)

Her biographies of Edward Irving (1862) and her cousin Laurence Oliphant (1892), together with her life of Sheridan in the English Men of Letters series (1883), show vivacity and a sympathetic touch. She also wrote a biography of the Scottish theologian John Tulloch.

Her varied historical and critical works include:

  • Historical Sketches of the Reign of George II (1869)
  • The Makers of Florence (1876)
  • A Literary History of England from 1760 to 1825 (1882)
  • The Makers of Venice (1887)
  • Royal Edinburgh (1890)
  • Jerusalem (1891)
  • The Makers of Modern Rome (1895)

At the time of her death, Oliphant was still working on Annals of a Publishing House, a record of the progress and achievement of the firm of Blackwood, with which she had been so long connected. Her Autobiography and Letters, which present a touching picture of her domestic anxieties, appeared in 1899. Only parts were written with a wider audience in mind: she had originally intended the Autobiography for her son, but he died before she had finished it.

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