Margaret Oliphant is an underrated figure in the history of the Victorian novel. Her enormous output is worth studying as a barometer of Victorian taste, although she did eventually fail to keep up with contemporary fashions. Most of her novels are entertaining, and one or two of them aspire to greatness even if they do not achieve it. Her life has a certain tragic dignity about it.

Margaret Oliphant Wilson was born in Musselburgh, Scotland, 4 April 1828. Her father, Francis Wilson, was an inefficient businessman, but her mother, Margaret, was energetic; this pattern was repeated in Mrs. Oliphant's own marriage, and her brothers and sons followed this unfortunate tradition. Curiously, Mrs. Oliphant's novels do not reflect as much bitterness to the male sex as might be expected, although the heroine is very often both dynamic and managing. At the age of twenty-one, she produced her first novel: Passages in...