Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant (4 April 1828 – 20 June 1897) was a Scottish author. On most of her works she was credited as "Mrs. Oliphant". Her career lasted nearly fifty years and she wrote over 120 works, in genres ranging from non-fiction (including biographies, travelogues and literary criticism) to comedies of manners to historical novels to ghost stories.
She wrote mainly to support herself and her three children after her husband's early death. (Sadly all three of her children predeceased her.) Her novels were popular during her lifetime, but fell into obscurity afterwards. Now many of them are out of print.
Incidentally, she has the distinction of being the second English-language author to write a series of novels sharing a setting but focusing on different characters: The Chronicles of Carlingford (1861–1876). (The first author to do this was Anthony Trollope with The Chronicles of Barsetshire.)
