Critical Essay | Critical Essay by R. C. Terry

Critical Essay by R. C. Terry

SOURCE: "Queen of Popular Fiction: Mrs. Oliphant and the Chronicles of Carlingford," in Victorian Popular Fiction, 1860-80, Macmillan Press, 1983, pp. 68-101.

In the following overview of the Chronicles of Carlingford, Terry discusses Oliphant as a "striking example" of the Victorian popular novelist—based on her talent and enormous output—and asserts that the Carlingford novels comprise her best work, without which readers would have an incomplete record of mid-Victorian fiction.

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)

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...
(read more)