Margaret Oliphant’s Prolificacy and Anxiety of Artistic Creation: A Study of Her Autobiography

Margaret Oliphant (1828-1897) was a Scottish Victorian, considered one of the most prolific writers of the Victorian period. She was very well known in her lifetime; yet, today she is considered a minor Victorian novelist. Specialists, who discuss Margaret Oliphant as an under-represented Victorian writer, cannot escape mentioning her overproduction as the main cause of her oblivion today. As a very important piece in Margaret Oliphant’s oeuvre, her Autobiography records that her prolificacy also worried the author. Writing so fast and so much made her very anxious, perhaps because she was discontented about the literary qualities of her own work. That is why the title of this article brings together what appear to be paradoxical expressions: prolificacy and anxiety of artistic creation. In her Autobiography, she cordially confesses her unhappiness, uneasiness and tough experiences both as the sole provider for a large family and as a woman writer, who never felt genuinely accomplished even though she was a very notable literary figure of her day. This article will therefore examine Margaret Oliphant’s Autobiography as a confessional narrative, which reveals an exceptionally prolific woman writer’s agony in respect to her profession as a writer.