Listings for Reader:
Margaret Oliphant
Click here to select all entries:
Samuel Richardson : Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady
'I am working at Richardson now, and will send you the paper by the end of the week. I suppose I ought to be ashamed to confess that, tedious as he often is, I feel less difficulty in getting through him than in reading Fielding, and that as a matter of taste I actually prefer Lovelace to Tom Jones! I suppose that is one of the differences between men and women which even Ladies' Colleges will not set to rights.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Henry Fielding : Tom Jones
'I am working at Richardson now, and will send you the paper by the end of the week. I suppose I ought to be ashamed to confess that, tedious as he often is, I feel less difficulty in getting through him than in reading Fielding, and that as a matter of taste I actually prefer Lovelace to Tom Jones! I suppose that is one of the differences between men and women which even Ladies' Colleges will not set to rights.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Edward Jenkins : Ginx's Baby
'I sympathise most warmly in a great deal that is said in the 'Ginx's Baby' book, and do actually express my own sentiments in what I say about it. And I admire immensely the "Peasant Life".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
unknown : Peasant Life
'I sympathise most warmly in a great deal that is said in the 'Ginx's Baby' book, and do actually express my own sentiments in what I say about it. And I admire immensely the "Peasant Life".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
George Chesney : Battle of Dorking
'If your old contributors had to yield the pas to such writers only as the author of the "Battle of Dorking" we should have little to complain of. It is wonderfully fine and powerful. Is it Laurence Oliphant? I can't think of anybody else with such a power of realism and wonderful command of the subject. It is vivid as Defoe.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Collins : unknown
'I agree with you that Mr Collins's volumes are very good, but I don't agree with you about Mr Trollope, whose "Caesar" I cannot read without laughing - it is so like Johnny Eames.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Anthony Trollope : Caesar
'I agree with you that Mr Collins's volumes are very good, but I don't agree with you about Mr Trollope, whose 'Caesar' I cannot read without laughing - it is so like Johnny Eames.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Alexander William Kinglake : Eothen
'Pray tell him [Mr Kinglake] that I have been an admirer of his for - Heaven knows how long! - since the days when I was shocked and delighted by "Eothen." I remember being very much amused by the opening out of two old neighbours of mine at Ealing, after a discussion of his first volume. In the enthusiasm created by it one of them, an old Peninsular officer, instructed me carefully how to make a pontoon bridge and get my (!) troops over it; while the other, Admiral Collinson, burst forth into naval experiences.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Major Lockhart : [verses]
'By the bye, how good and clever his (Major Lockhart's) verses are which you sent me...'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant
Alexander Allardyce : City of Sunshine
'There is a novel not very long published by a Mr Allardyce called the "City of Sunshine", entirely about Indian (not Anglo-Indian) life, which gives a very fine picture of an old Mohammedan officer in the old sepoy army. It is a very clever book. I don't know if it would interest you, who have the real thing under your eyes, as much as it interests us, or I would put it into the next box that is sent.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Alphonse Daudet : [novels]
'I think very highly of Daudet as a novelist, but I know nothing of him personally.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
: Blackwood's Magazine
'I ought to have written last month to thank you and your able contributor for the flattering mention made of me in the article on Magazines, but the coming here complicated my other businesses, and I did not even read the article till somewhat late in the month. I am now overwhelmed by Mr Shand's (it is Mr Shand?) civilities in the present number.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Serial / periodical
: Times, The
'I read with sad interest the references to your brother's battery in the 'Times' this morning.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Newspaper
George MacDonald : David Elginbrod
[Editorial commentary by Annie Coghill, Mrs Oliphant's cousin] 'George Macdonald's first book, or at any rate his first successful book, "David Elginbrod", had been published many years before by Messrs Hurst & Blackett, at Mrs Oliphant's warm recommendation. She always spoke of it as a work of genius, and quoted it as one of the instances of publishers' blunders, for when the MS. came to her it came enveloped in wrappings that showed how many refusals it had already suffered.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Manuscript: MS of a book
John Morley : Life of George Eliot
'Thank you very much for the "Life of George Eliot," and for the kind and flattering inscription. I am very glad to have the book, which is as curious a book as any I ever saw. The personality of the great writer is as yet very confusing to me in the extreme flatness of the picture. I don't mean by flatness dulness [sic], though there is something of that, but only that it is like mural paintings or sculpture in very low relief. I have just run over your reviewer's article and think it very good.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
: Review of the Life of George Eliot
'Thank you very much for the "Life of George Eliot," and for the kind and flattering inscription. I am very glad to have the book, which is as curious a book as any I ever saw. The personality of the great writer is as yet very confusing to me in the extreme flatness of the picture. I don't mean by flatness dulness [sic], though there is something of that, but only that it is like mural paintings or sculpture in very low relief. I have just run over your reviewer's article and think it very good.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Serial / periodical
Laurence Oliphant : Land of Gilead, The
'Laurence Oliphant's sketches of the Druse villages are delightful, but his philosophy is something too tremendous. I am making the most prodigious effort to understand his book, but I have to catch hold of the furniture after a few pages to keep myself from turning round and round, and yet the absorption of such a man of the world as he is in a religious idea has something very fine in it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
: Athenaeum
'I see by the "Athenaeum" that the Magazine is to be enlarged'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Serial / periodical
: Blackwood's Magazine
'Thanks for the old numbers; they are very interesting, and what vigour in them! - but one could not speak so strongly now.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Serial / periodical
: Blackwood's Magazine
'It seems an excellent number, with the exception of the short story, which is not up to "Maga's" mark. The article on Hayward is very good. Sir Edward Hamley, I think?'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Serial / periodical
A.K.H. Boyd : Taking in Sail
'I have just been reading your paper about "Taking in Sail". I think I have told you before how much I feel with and sympathise in your afternoon musings - the subdued thoughts that come to us with the decline of the day.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Unknown
J.M. Barrie : Auld Licht Idylls
'I don't at all know the books you refer to - I have not seen any of them. Mr Barrie's "Auld Licht Idylls," etc, I think exceedingly clever. Indeed there seems to me genius in them, though the Scotch is, as you say, much too provincial.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
: Blackwood's Magazine
I don't feel quite sure with the last paper whether it is in earnest or not, or if your contributor means to make fun of Macdonald, who is often a noble writer, but not, I think, according to these specimens, in poetry.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Serial / periodical, Unknown
: [a paper on the Poor Laws in Austria]
I had half a mind, on reading a paper about the Poor Laws in Austria in your Magazine, to send you a sketch of Dr Chalmers's great experiment in Glasgow, which I think a very fine thing indeed, and which has fallen out of recollection.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Newspaper, Unknown
A.P. Stanley : A Selection from the writings of Dean Stanley
I have done nothing but wade through Dean Stanley's Life this last week in the intervals of doing perfunctorily a little work in the mornings.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
: Blackwood's Magazine
I have several times intended to speak of the very great vigour and fresh start which the Magazine seems to me to have taken during the last year. It has been more full of interesting articles, and altogether stronger than for a long time before.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Serial / periodical
Andrew Lang : Life of Lockhart
Mr Lang sent me several chapters to read in the early summer, which I thought were rather dull - tell it not in Gath - with much virtuous indignation about 'Maga's' personalities.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Serial / periodicalManuscript: MS chapters of a book
Marie Corelli :
I suppose there was no man who had a greater command of the public in his day [than Bulwer Lytton]. To be sure, one might say the same of Miss Marie Corelli, who, by the way in the only book of hers I can read, seems to be founded upon Bulwer
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Amelia Hutchison Stirling : Monsieur le Comte
'Miss Hutchison Stirling is I believe about to submit to you a little story which I read at her request some time ago and in which I thought there was great promise especially in one character.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Manuscript: Book in MS
Harriette Cheape : Tea at the Mains
'Is it right to ask who was the author of a very short contribution called I think Tea at the farm, or some such name? ["Tea at the Mains", by Harriette Cheape] It was exceedingly good and true.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Louis Stevenson : Wrecker
'I should like to say my mind about Louis Stevenson's Wrecker and the Naulakhka - both of which are striking instances of the evils of collaboration.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Rudyard Kipling : Naulakha
'I should like to say my mind about Louis Stevenson's Wrecker and the Naulakhka - both of which are striking instances of the evils of collaboration.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Sarah Grand : Singularly Deluded
'May I say that the new story in the Magazine begins very well? - the incident is striking and I think quite original, though the name of the story might have been better chosen.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Serial / periodical
: St James's
'I see a delightful account of the origin of Bon Gaultier's parody of Locksley Hall in last night's St James's' by Sir Theodore Martin.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Newspaper, Serial / periodical
Graham Travers : Mona Maclean: Medical Student
'As for Mona Maclean I am afraid I could not say more than that it is a cleverish very youthful book, the author of which if she comes to anything will probably much regret having published it some years back. Marion Crawford's last novel is clever of course as are all his, but not pleasant and very long and dreary I think.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book, Serial / periodical
F Marion Crawford :
'As for Mona Maclean I am afraid I could not say more than that it is a cleverish very youthful book, the author of which if she comes to anything will probably much regret having published it some years back. Marion Crawford's last novel is clever of course as are all his, but not pleasant and very long and dreary I think.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book, Serial / periodical
:
'I see in the papers that that man Walter Scott is going to bring out shortly a collection of Anglicized versions of early Scotch poetry such as Dunbar, Henryson, &c.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Advertisement, Newspaper
:
'[...] how extremely sorry I am for your great loss in Mr. Henderson. I saw a mention of him [Mr. Henderson] in the Athenaeum last Saturday with the greatest regret'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Advertisement, Newspaper, Serial / periodical
Walter Scott : Fortunes of Nigel
'Just a little note of this night. I had been working very hard and came to my room very late and tired, but took up a book, the "Fortunes of Nigel" and read on and on till it was three o'clock in the morning.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
: Review of 'Felix Holt the Radical'
'I think the praise of the "Saturday Review" and the "Times" - evidently both are much dissatisfied with the book [George Eliot's "Felix Holt"] and neither daring to say so, except in the most timid way - proves this conclusively.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Newspaper
: Review of 'Felix Holt the Radical'
'I think the praise of the "Saturday Review" and the "Times" - evidently both are much dissatisfied with the book [George Eliot's "Felix Holt"] and neither daring to say so, except in the most timid way - proves this conclusively.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Newspaper
George Eliot : Felix Holt the Radical
'I have got two copies of "Felix Holt" - the last sent me by Mr Langford [...] I don't think I could say anything satisfactory about it. It leaves an impression on my mind as of "Hamlet" played by six sets of gravediggers. Of course it will be a successful book, but I think chiefly because "Adam Bede" and "Silas Marner" went before it. Now that I have read it, I have given up the idea of reviewing it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
: [Advertisement of works by Lamartine]
'A propos of French literature, there is an advertisement of Lamartine in the papers which goes to one's heart, offering, not even by a publisher in his own name a [italics] rabais [end italics] of so many francs on the price of his entire works to anyone who will buy them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Advertisement, Newspaper
: The Times
'Thank you for sending me the "Times" with the review. It is very gracious and good [...] I don't know whether I am alone in thinking so, of if the opinion is general, but it seems to me that the writing of the "Times" just now is wonderfully bad'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Newspaper
: Bible
'When I went to read the chapter about the many mansions, even then I seemed to be stifled again'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Elizabeth Gaskell : Life of Charlotte Bronte
'I was reading of Charlotte Bronte the other day, and could not help comparing myself with the picture more or less as I read. I don't suppose my powers are equal to hers - my work to myself looks perfectly pale and colourless beside hers - but yet I have had far more experience and, I think, a fuller conception of life'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Swinburne : Threnody
I cut out of a newspaper and put in here a little poem of Swinburne whom I have never loved. It is dated three years ago, yet was published only the other day - for whom, for us? I have read it over and over again, scarcely able to see the words for tears.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Newspaper
: [Italian]
'[I] sit through the evening with Denny alone generally, often reading a little Italian'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant
Walter Scott : Journal
'What a wonderful record is that journal of Sir Walter's which dear Annie Ritchie has sent me - and with what love one watches everything he does. I have read over and over again what he says of his wife's death. It is so sober, so chastened, so true: "I wonder how I shall do with the thoughts which were hers for thirty years".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
R.T. Davison : Life of Archibald Campbell Tait
'I have found a little, not comfort, but fellowship in reading about Archbishop Tait. I did not like his book. I thought it too personal, too sacred for publication, but now brought down to the very dust, I turned to it with a sense of common suffering'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
John Addington Symonds : Life of Symonds
'I have been reading the life of Mr Symonds, and it makes me almost laugh (though little laughing is in my heart) to think of the strange difference between this prosaic little narrative, all about the facts of a life so simple as mine, and his elaborate self-discussions'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Edward Bulwer Lytton : Night and Morning
'Since seeing Captain Blackwood yesterday I have read over 'Night and Morning'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Edward Caird : Sermons
'If you wish me to take up Mr Caird's Sermons I will be glad to do it. I think myself that there is a little want of human experience in them, - the troubles of this life - which one thinks the more of by a natural selfishness when one seems to have a double portion of them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
: Athenaeum
We are very curious and interested about "Adam Bede", which we see advertised and criticised in the "Athenaeum".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Advertisement, Serial / periodical
unknown : Review of Adam Bede
We are very curious and interested about "Adam Bede", which we see advertised and criticised in the "Athenaeum".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Serial / periodical
: Blackwood's Magazine
'Thank you very much for the Magazine - I am charmed with "St Stephen's". It is Sir Edward's, of course.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Serial / periodical
?Edward ?Bulwer Lytton : St Stephen's
'Thank you very much for the Magazine - I am charmed with "St Stephen's". It is Sir Edward's, of course.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Serial / periodical
R.H. Story :
'I was extremely glad to get your MS [...] I have of course some small criticism to make, but none of importance [...] Is it necessary to mention distinctly Maurice and F.W. Robertson as leaders of the "Advance of Christian Thought"?'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Manuscript: Sheet, work in MS
A.W. Kinglake : Invasion of the Crimea
'I am delighted with Kinglake: has he steered quite clear of action for libel, or is it not within the bounds of possibility that you may be defendants in an imperial place? Such a concentration of suave hatred, malice, and uncharitableness surely never was. The narrative is perfectly delightful.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Edward Bulwer Lytton : Essays
'How delightful are Sir Edward's Essays. One seems to see his own special creation, the accomplished man of the world, not entirely worldly, a quintessence of social wisdom and experience, sweetened by imagination'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Wilkie Collins : The Woman in White
'I must say I think the "Woman in White" a marvel of workmanship. I found it bear a second reading very well, and indeed it was having it thrown in my way for a second time which attracted so strongly my technical admiration'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Wilkie Collins : The Woman in White
'I must say I think the "Woman in White" a marvel of workmanship. I found it bear a second reading very well, and indeed it was having it thrown in my way for a second time which attracted so strongly my technical admiration'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
David Wingate : My Little Wife
'Now about your literary questions, scoffer! Know that I read everything (except the politics, - I am a Radical, you know) which has the honour of appearing in "Maga" [Blackwood's Magazine]. And I like some of David Wingate's poems very much, other some I don't particularly care for; "My Little Wife" is delightful.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Horatio Forbes Brown : John Addington Symonds: A Biography Compiled from
'I have been reading the Life of Mr Symond, and it makes me almost laugh (though there is little laughing in my heart) to think of the strange difference between this prosaic little narrative,all about the facts of a life so simple, and his elaborate self- discussions.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : The Master of Ballantrae
On one occasion, he came to me, flourishing a paper wildly in the air...I thought he had suddenly inherited a fortune, or that something of an extreme value had fallen in his way. 'What in heaven's name is it?' I asked. 'This, my friend. For years a certain critic has practically damned my works - said there was nothing really in them - and now this person, whose ability I have always admired despite the fact that I have suffered, has declared: "Stevenson has at last produced one of the best books of the season, and the claim of his friends seems fully justified, for the work is full of genius."' His face was all aglow with feverish excitement. 'Who is this wonderful critic, Stevenson, whose praise you so enjoy? And what bitter things has he said of you before?' 'We will drop the severe things, Moors. You would never guess, if I gave you all morning, who it is who has at last admitted me to be in the front rank of my profession. It is Mrs Oliphant, my dear sir - Mrs Oliphant!'
