SOURCE: "The Seen and the Unseen," in The Equivocal Virtue: Mrs. Oliphant and the Victorian Literary Marketplace, Archon Books, 1966, pp. 88-107.

In this excerpt, Vineta and Robert Colby review the varied qualities of Oliphant's supernatural tales.

Early in her career, in her novels and in her biography of Irving, Mrs. Oliphant had revealed a sympathy for the visionary mystic, the prophet without honor in his country—just such a figure as is represented in the tragic Paul Lecamus of A Beleaguered City. Her study of Montalembert brought her into contact with the French monastic revival, the continental counterpart of the Oxford Movement. The interest she developed in the ideas of Montalembert and his fellow crusaders Lamennais and Lacordaire account in particular for the French setting of A Beleaguered City as well as for the socio-religious milieu of that impressive story. Moreover, one of her closest friends, Principal Tulloch...