The Selected Works of Margaret Oliphant, Parts V and VI: Major Novels ed. by Joanne Shattock and Elisabeth Jay

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Selected Works of Margaret Oliphant, Parts V and VI: Major Novels ed. by Joanne Shattock and Elisabeth Jay Solveig C. Robinson (bio) Joanne Shattock and Elisabeth Jay, general editors, The Selected Works of Margaret Oliphant, Parts V and VI: Major Novels, 6 vols. (London: Routledge, 2015–17) pp. 2400, £335/$545 (each part) cloth. The publication of The Selected Works of Margaret Oliphant concludes with Parts V and VI, the latter of which was finally released in early 2017. Presented by general editors Joanne Shattock and Elisabeth Jay and now published by Routledge (since Part IV), these final volumes in the series contain six major stand-alone novels that represent the second half of Oliphant's prolific writing career. Part V comprises Hester (1883), The Wizard's Son (1884), and Kirsteen (1890), while Part VI includes At His Gates (1872), The Ladies Lindores (1883), and Oliphant's last novel, Old Mr. Tredgold (1896). Oliphant fans may be familiar with the novels Hester, Kirsteen, and possibly The Ladies Lindores, but the other works will likely strike many readers as being fresh—and thus very welcome—new material for a range of nineteenth-century fiction courses. In keeping with previous installments of this selected edition, each part includes a general introduction that provides valuable context for the works under consideration, introductions and bibliographies for each novel, and a wealth of useful endnotes. Elisabeth Jay edited two of the six novels presented here, and the others were edited by Gail Marshall, Valerie Sanders, Josie Billington, and Joanne Wilkes. The goal in these final volumes was to represent the rich variety of Oliphant's fiction in her later life and to show how these works both build upon and depart from her earlier fiction, particularly the Chronicles of Carlingford (which make up Part IV of the series). The novels in Part V represent Oliphant's work in the realms of domestic realism, historical fiction, and the supernatural, while those in Part VI demonstrate how Oliphant strengthened her realist (as opposed to idealist) view of human nature over the course of her career. Taken together, the publication histories of these six novels reveal the full range of the ways in which fiction was purveyed to the late Victorian public. Hester was published as a standard three-decker by Macmillan, while the others appeared first in serial form: The Ladies Lindores in Oliphant's most regular venue, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine; The Wizard's Son and Kirsteen in Macmillan's Magazine; At His Gates in Good Words; and Old Mr. Tredgold in Longman's Magazine. As Jay and Shattock observe in the general introduction to Part VI, the variety of publishing venues testifies both to "how adept MOWO became at placing her work, and the popularity of a name upon which editors could count to attract readers" (25:xi). Several of these works also had overlapping writing and publication schedules. Sanders notes that [End Page 670] while writing Hester Oliphant was also serializing The Ladies Lindores, The Wizard's Son, and two other novels, while also evidently moving along another three-volume novel and a volume on Sheridan for Macmillan's Men of Letters series. This output demonstrates Oliphant's capacity for maintaining a terrifying pace of literary production, even well into her golden years (20:xxiii–xxiv). As with the earlier volumes of this series, readers of Victorian Periodicals Review are likely to find much of interest in the editorial apparatus accompanying each novel, particularly behind-the-scenes information about how periodical editors came to fill their pages. For example, in her introduction to The Wizard's Son, Jay describes how John Morley, who took over the editorship of Macmillan's after six installments of Oliphant's novel had been published in the magazine, decided to reduce the length of each number—a decision which meant Oliphant's page allowance was cut from a generous twenty-five to just thirteen. "This," Jay notes wryly, "told against her normally expansive style" and explains why the text varies so much between the serialized and three-volume editions (21:1). Similarly, in her introduction to At His Gates, Wilkes notes that Oliphant originally offered the...