The Scottish Stories of Margaret Oliphant

Abstract

It is not always easy to write about Margaret Oliphant, for the good reason that very few people have read her. Her books have been out of print for most of this century and, even among students of Victorian and Scottish literature, there is a widespread impression that she was an unimportant figure. On the other hand, those people who have read her almost all agree that, at her best, she was a magnificent novelist. In the last few years, some of her work has come back into print and more may follow. Her ghost stories ‘The Open Door’ and ‘The Library Window’, and her novel Kirsteen — all of them based in Scotland, incidentally — are the best places to begin.