As an expatriate Scotswoman, Margaret Oliphant (1828-97) started her prolific and accomplished writing career removed from the centre of Victorian literary life. This comprehensive biography contains an often surprising portrait of the professional Victorian woman writer.

`Elisabeth Jay has drawn upon Oliphant's wide-ranging writing in numerous modes, to give a comprehensive and often surprising portrait of the professional Victorian woman writer. This study of Oliphant's career as a professional Victorian writer, of her critical and intellectual interests, and the extraordinary way in which she managed fiction and journalism over her career, will cast a new light on the period.' Elaine Showalter, Professor of English, Princeton University `This is a valuable study, strong on Mrs Oliphant's religious experiences and on her personal life.' Observer `magnificent book ... Jay herself has attempted - successfully - to write a thematic study which tugs out strands from Oliphant's life and fiction and allows them to lie alongside each other, resistant to any hierarchical ordering. ... Jay does her good service ... she has written a model biography: rigorous, experimental and saturated with respect and affection for its subject.' Literary Review `for anyone interested in the story of fiction, here is a perceptive introduction to a woman whose very ordinariness made her an extraordinary phenomenon in literary history.' Financial Times 'this biographical study takes her seriously as an artist' The Independent 'This is a 'valuable study of ... a woman who was unsparingly self-aware'.' The Observer 'This is a valuable study, strong on Mrs Oliphant's religious experiences and on her professional life.' Penelope Fitzgerald, The Observer `Interesting, brave woman. Excellent Book.' The London Evening Standard `a scholarly account of the woman and her work that is a serious and welcome contribution to the study of a still unjustly neglected writer ... Elisabeth Jay's book will be of interest to those who already love Oliphant; for new readers the novels and short stories themselves should be the first priority.' The Herald `She manages to involve us in Mrs Oliphant's unknown books to such an extent, and with such skill, that I for one became quite convinced that, instead of having read four of the novels and one of the biographies...I had read them all. This is a rare achievement for an academic study, but Jay is unusaually patient and attentive to her reaer, and it shows at every stage. ...her book is a truly literary biography, concerned to show how Mrs oliphant's writing both mirrored and evaded her concerns.' Times Literary Supplement `...sympathetic and well researched book..for anyone interested in the story of fiction, here is a perceptive introduction to a woman whose very ordinariness made her an extraordinary phenomenon in literary history.' Financial Times `Elisabeth Jay's book will be of interest to those who already love Oliphant; for new reaers the novels and short stories themselves should be the first priority.' The Herald `Jay's patient recovery of Oliphant's ideas, analysis of the author's contemporary reputation, and somewhat daunting reference to literally dozens of novels puts Victorian scholars in her debt...the bibliography, chronology, and ample citations (including unpublished materials) provide solid ground for this needed major study of an author whose work is largely inaccessible now.' Choice Vol 33 no 2 `This is a "valuable study of ... a woman who was unsparingly self-aware".' The Observer `Deeply researched, intensely focused biography.' Journal of Gender Studies `The greatest problem facing the biographer is the sheer volume of the writing ... Elisabeth Jay has found an intelligent way of triumphing over the dilemma. She arranges her material thematically rather than chronologically, and is thus able to dip briefly, appositely, but repeatedly into the fiction to illustrate her themes. Her final chapter consists of a fair, clear-sighted critical assessment of the works.' Rosemary Ashton, University College, London, Review of English Studies, Vol. XLVIII, No. 189, Feb '97 `a stunning work of criticism interwoven with biography and a deft embroidery of the carefully considered views of a serious, and seriously neglected, writer. ... without question the best available work on Oliphant. It is, further, among the best available considerations of any Victorian woman writer.' Nineteenth-Century Literature, 51:1, June 1996 `In Jay, Oliphant has at last found the biographer whom she deserves. Jay has written a first-rate biography of a difficult woman and a complicated life with a format that draws out the multiple and often conflicting roles Oliphant played through her long career. ... Her book is a compendium of information on Oliphant and on particular texts. ... a marvelous sourcebook to which one can return. ... Jay's reading of all the novels and other writings helps put Oliphant's varied accomplishments into proper perspective.' Victorian Studies, Winter 1996 `sensitive and extremely well rounded study of Oliphant's life and work ... rewarding, incisive and sensitive ... Jay's work is a fascinating and detailed appraisal of Oliphant that could stand as a classic model for other literary scholars to emulate' David Finkelstein, Scottish Literary Journal, Supp 45 (Winter '96)

Editor of The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant: The Complete Text (OUP, 1990), Author of The Religion of the Heart (OUP, 1979), Faith and Doubt in Victorian Britain (Macmillan, 1986), and editor of The Journal of John Wesley (OUP, 1987)