The Selected Works of Margaret Oliphant, Part IV
Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant (1828–97) is one of the most important writers of the nineteenth century. She was both prolific and wide ranging in her career which spanned half a century. Primarily known as a novelist Mrs Oliphant is of interest to scholars today both for her wide popularity in her prime and her influential position as reviewer and journalist which saw her become an important critical voice for her generation. Her high profile in the literary world led to savage satirical portrayals in works by Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy and Henry James. This is the most ambitious and substantial scholarly edition of Margaret Oliphant’s writings ever undertaken. In six parts and twenty-five volumes all her important fiction plus substantial selections of her criticism and journalism are collected and edited by a prestigious editorial team. Parts I to III have brought back much of Oliphant’s work as critic, biographer and historian into the contemporary arena and begun the process of selecting the fiction which best represents her multi-faceted achievement as a novelist. The presentation of her finest short stories and novellas in Part III provides an apt introduction to Part IV, devoted to the Chronicles of Carlingford, as this provincial saga’s origins also lie in the short story. When Oliphant’s obituarists approached the formidable task of summing up her long career, even the most diligent among them baulked at a systematic appraisal of her prodigious fictional output. However they all cited the Chronicles of Carlingford as amongst her best work. Part IV offers the first critical edition of the four full length novels and three stories that comprise the Chronicles of Carlingford. Each of the five volumes contains a full scholarly apparatus, including the important variations between the serial versions and the first publication in volume format. Oliphant herself certainly saw the instant success of the series as one of the critical turning-points in her long career, and as the series reached its conclusion in Phoebe, Junior (1876) offered comparisons which encouraged her readers to judge her contribution to the genre alongside Trollope’s equally popular and long-lasting Chronicles of Barsetshire.