13 Facts About Margaret Oliphant

Margaret Oliphant spent her childhood at Lasswade, Glasgow and Liverpool.

Margaret Oliphant had her first novel published, Passages in the Life of Mrs Margaret Maitland, in 1849.

In May 1852, Margaret married her cousin, Frank Wilson Oliphant, at Birkenhead and settled at Harrington Square, now in Camden, London.

Margaret Oliphant's husband was an artist working mainly in stained glass.

Margaret Oliphant's husband developed tuberculosis and for his health they moved in January 1859 to Florence and then to Rome, where he died.

Margaret Oliphant returned to England and took up literature to support her three surviving children.

Margaret Oliphant had become a popular writer by then and worked notably hard to sustain her position.

Margaret Oliphant offered a home to him and his children, adding their support to already heavy responsibilities.

Margaret Oliphant wrote more than 120 works, including novels, books of travel and description, histories, and volumes of literary criticism.

Margaret Oliphant wrote lives of Francis of Assisi, the French historian Count de Montalembert, Dante, Miguel de Cervantes, and the Scottish theologian John Tulloch.

At the time of her death, Margaret 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.

Opinions on Margaret Oliphant's work are split, with some critics seeing her as a "domestic novelist", while others recognise her work as influential and important to the Victorian literature canon.

Interest in Mrs Margaret Oliphant's work declined in the 20th century.