Books by Margaret Oliphant

Hester (1883) is about the difficulty of understanding human nature, and a compulsive story of financial and sexual risk-taking that mounts towards a searing climax. It tells of the ageing but powerful Catherine Vernon, and her conflict with the young and determined Hester, whose growing attachment to Edward, Catherine's favourite, spells disaster for all concerned.

MISS MARJORIBANKS is one of her Chronicles of Carlingford. Exquisite and entertaining comedies of Victorian provincial Society.

HESTER, first publsihed in 1883, is both a remarkable portrayal of two strong women and a fascinating study of capitalism and the family - those two solid mainstays of Victorian England.

THE PERPETUAL CURATE is one of her Chronicles of Carlingford. Exquisite and entertaining comedies of Victorian provincial Society.

After the death of Margaret Oliphant - the prolific nineteenth century novelist, biographer, essayist, reviewer, and prominent voice on the "woman question" - two well-intending relatives took the autobiographical manuscripts she composed over a thirty-year period, and recomposed them to suit the model of a conventional memoir.

Returning home to tend her widowed father Dr Marjoribanks, Lucilla soon launches herself into Carlingford society, aiming to raise the tone with her select Thursday evening parties. Optimistic, resourceful and blithely unimpeded by self-doubt, Lucilla is a superior being in every way, not least in relation to men. 'A tour de force...full of wit, surprises and intrigue...We can imagine Jane Austen reading MISS MARJORIBANKS with enjoyment and approval in the Elysian Fields' - Q. D. Leavis. Leavisdeclared Oliphant's heroine Lucilla to be the missing link in Victorian literature between Jane Austen's Emma and George Eliot's Dorothea Brook and 'more entertaining, more impressive and more likeable than either'.