Mrs Oliphant

As an expatriate Scotswoman, Mrs Oliphant (1828-97) started her prolific and accomplished writing career at three removes from the centre of Victorian literary life. Elisabeth Jay's comprehensive biography contains an often surprising portrait of the professional Victorian woman writer. Her study considers the way in which a particular woman writer perceived her own life, and the wider question of whether women writers have been well served by the mythological structures of male biography.