Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Margaret Oliphant

Margaret Oliphant

Professor Valerie Sanders University of Hull

Hardcover

Series: Key Popular Women Writers

Literary Criticism

ISBN10: 1912224917
ISBN13: 9781912224913
Publisher: Edward Everett Root
Published: Aug 30 2020
Pages: 1
Weight: 0.90
Height: 0.56 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
This concise new book provides close readings of both canonical and less familiar novels and articles by the novelist Margaret Oliphant (1828-97). They show how she maintained a spirited dialogue with her age, confronting its ingrained prejudices, while reinforcing some of them herself. / A prolific novelist, auto/biographer, and periodical writer, Mrs. Oliphant was also a highly contradictory figure. Not just for her apparently anti-feminist standpoint on many issues, but also for her disparaging dismissal of the 'sensation' novel of the 1860s, while freely adopting some of its features in her own writing (including supernatural tales). / This study argues that Oliphant's outlook on nineteenth-century culture was both provocative and unpredictable. Her best novels are witty, acerbic, and deeply ironic as she dismantles the sacred assumptions of the Victorian middle classes, and updates her chronicles of judgemental communities to tackle the extremes of idealism and inertia. / Oliphant was a keen observer of dysfunctional families, male professionals, and religious snobbery. She notices bodies and clothes, the touch of hands, unflattering complexions, loud colours, and limp muslins. Her widows refuse to retire into the shadows, while her men are notoriously inept and lethargic. This thorough reappraisal of the most controversial areas of her writing draws on fresh critical approaches, from clothes history to theories of embodied subjectivity, as well as the rich field of journalism studies. / Contents [provisional]: Ch.1. Margaret Oliphant: 'One of those difficult cases for criticism'; Ch.2, 'General utility woman' or Critic of the Age?; Ch.3. Mothers, Daughters, Wives, Widows; Ch. 4. Mrs Oliphant's Clothes and Bodies; Ch.5. 'Only a Man' Oliphant's Masculinities; Ch.6. The Sensational and Supernatural; Ch.7. Conclusion.

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