MARGARET OLIPHANT’S CRITICISM OF WOMEN’S SENSATION NOVELS

As a prolific novelist, short-story writer, reviewer, biographer and critic, margaret oliphant (1828-1897) was one of the significant literary figures of the victorian age. even though none of margaret oliphant’s literary oeuvre could secure canonical status today, academic interest on her works was revived thanks to the anglo- american feminist project of resurrecting neglected works by women writers of the past centuries. margaret oliphant devoted her life to writing mostly because of financial reasons. she was producing both fictional and non-fictional pieces at an incredible speed. this enabled her opportunity to voice her opinions on the social, political and literary movements of the victorian era. today, her personal position concerning political and social discussions of the period constitutes a major debate in contemporary victorian studies. her articles on the concerns of the victorian women’s movement and her harsh criticism of the 1860s controversial sensational texts are today considered as narrative evidences of her conservatism. this essay thus aims to offer an analysis of two of her articles titled “sensation novels” (1862) and “novels” (1867), which will hopefully reveal the pressure of moralistic aspects of victorian literary criticism especially on sensation women novelists of the 1860s.