Oliphant, MRS MARGARET (née WILSON), one of the most distinguished of modern female novelists, was born in 1828 at Wallyford, near Musselburgh, Midlothian. In 1849 she published her first work, Passages in the Life of Mrs Margaret Maitland, which instantly won attention and approval. Its most distinctive charm is the tender humour and insight which regulate its exquisite delineation of Scottish life and character at once in their higher and lower levels. This work was followed by Caleb Field (1850), Merkland (1850), Adam Graeme (1852), Harry Muir (1853), Magdalcn Hepburn (1854), Lilliesleaf (1855), and Katie Stewart (1852), The Quiet Heart (1854), Zaidee (1855), the last three of which origin- ally appeared in succession in Blackwood's Magazine. Though these are of somewhat various merit, in all of them the peculiar talent of the writer is marked. They are rich in the minute detail which is dear to the womanly mind; have nice and subtle insights into character, a flavour of quiet humour, and frequent traits of delicacy and pathos in the treatment of the gentler emotions. It was, however, by the Chronicles of Carlingford (first published in Blackwood's, 1861-64) that her reputation as a novelist was first secured. In the first of them, The Doctor's Family, the character of little Netty, the heroine, vivifies the whole work, and may rank as an original creation. The next in the series, Salem Chapel, perhaps indicates a wider and more vigorous grasp than is to be found in any other work of the authoress. Certain of the unlovelier features of English dissent, as exhibited in a small provincial community, are here graphically sketched, and adapted with admirable skill to the purposes of fiction. After more than forty years of novel-writing Mrs Oliphant's powers showed no decadence. She possessed till the end the old art of interesting her readers; there was still the same fidelity to truth in the minor details of her novels. From 1868 she had a civil list pension of £100; she died 27th June 1897.
Her other works include Agnes (1865); Madonna Mary (1866); The Minister's Wife (1869); John and Three Brothers (1870); Squire Arden (1871); Ombra (1872); A Rose in June (1874); Phabe Junior (1876); The Primrose Path (1878); Within the Precincts (1879); He that Will Not when He May (1880); In Trust (1882); The Ladies Lindores and It was a Lover and his Lass (1883); Hester, The Wizard's Son, and Sir Tom (1884); Madam and Two Stories of the Seen and Unseen (1885); House Divided against Itself (1886); A Country Gentleman and The Son of his Father (1887); The Second Son and Joyce (1888); Neighbours on the Green, Lady Car, and A Poor Gentleman (1889); The Duke's Daughter and Kirsten (1890). Her more important contributions to general literature have been Life of Edward Irving (1862); Historical Sketches of the Reign of George II. (1869); St Francis of Assisi (1871); Memoir of the Comte de Montalembert (1872); The Makers of Florence (1876); Dress (1878); The Literary History of England, from 1790 to 1825 (1882); A Little Pilgrim: in the Unseen (1882); The Makers of Venice (1888); Dante and Cervantes in 'Foreign Classics for English Readers'; Memoir of Principal Tullloch (1888); Royal Edinburgh (1890); Life of Laurence Oliphant (1891); The Reign of Queen Anne (1894); The Makers of Modern Rome (1895); Jeanne d'Arc (1896); besides a child's history of Scotland (1896), and a history of the publishing house of Blackwood (1897).