Queen of Popular Fiction: Mrs Oliphant and the Chronicles of Carlingford

Abstract

Mrs Oliphant is a striking example of the professional woman of letters in the mid-Victorian period. Henry James, always notable for exquisitely ambiguous judgements on his fellow-writers, called her ‘a gallant woman’, praising her ‘heroic production’ (quantity uppermost in his mind rather than quality) but expressing admiration for her perception and subtlety.¹ Queen Victoria read and admired her novels, several times calling her to audience, and at her funeral in 1897 a wreath bore a message of respect and farewell from the monarch. She was a queenly personage herself in many respects. J. M. Barrie amusingly describes his first meeting with her, in 1886, when he was ‘ordered’ to Windsor where she was then living. He bought his first umbrella for the occasion, but it was of little avail. The regal presence unnerved him.² In her obituary William Blackwood wrote, ‘Mrs Oliphant has been to the England of letters what the Queen has been to society as a whole. She, too, was crowned with age and honour in her own empire; widow and mother, she has tasted the triumph of life as well as the bitterness.’³

I might have done better work…. Who can tell? I did with much labour what

I thought the best, and there is only a might have been on the other side.

Mrs Oliphant, Autobiography and Letters (1899)