ABSTRACT
Margaret Oliphant was a regular reviewer for Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for over 40 years, from the mid-1850s till her death in 1897, writing on multifarious authors female and male, past and present, British and Continental. Her work as a literary critic, and also as a commentator on the Woman Question, has received welcome attention in recent years. Oliphant's concern in writing The Anti-Marriage League under her own name was about the strength of her own reputation, but Thomas Hardy's characterisation of the review as the screaming of a poor lady in Blackwood suggests that patronising treatment because of her sex was another risk. There have been valuable recent studies focusing on Oliphant's gendering of her reviewing voice. Unfortunately, according to Oliphant, a woman of intellectual claims may try too hard to counter conventional assumptions about women. She was certainly scathing about the limitations of some prominent male novelists apparent understanding of women.
