Madam: A Novel

Margaret Oliphant Wilson OliphantProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.5

Word count: 941K words
Chapters: 95

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today. Madam: A Novel by Mrs. Oliphant. Author: Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret), 1828-1897. Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jul 16, 2017

Editor's review

Madam is a novel by the prolific Victorian writer Margaret Oliphant, belonging to the classic nineteenth-century tradition of the English novel of manners. Oliphant excelled at delicately rendering family relations, class respectability, and the situation of women, and this book likewise centers on a female figure known as "Madam", unfolding through layered domestic scenes and psychological portraiture to show how social norms shape individual destinies. As a Project Gutenberg public-domain ebook, its value lies in giving readers easy access to a Victorian writer outside the first rank of the canon, filling out our picture of the period's literary landscape. While reading, note the narrator's tone, in which sympathy for the female characters coexists with irony, and how domestic space becomes an arena where power and feeling contend. It rewards slow reading in a quiet setting; some knowledge of nineteenth-century English society will bring out the text's subtleties.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who love Victorian English fiction
Scholars and students of nineteenth-century women's writing and domestic narrative
Readers seeking to broaden their English-literature reading beyond the best-known classic authors

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer fast-paced, plot-driven modern fiction
Beginners unused to nineteenth-century English long sentences and slow narrative
Readers who only want the author's most famous representative works

Reading tips

First learn about Oliphant's era and her prolific writing career, then begin the text
Pay attention to the identity and power implications behind the name "Madam", and take reading notes
Read one or two chapters a day, noting dialogue and psychological description in domestic scenes
After reading, compare with female figures in other Victorian novels

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book suitable for non-native English readers?

It can be read, but requires some English proficiency. Nineteenth-century English has long sentences and fairly formal diction, so reading with a dictionary or an annotated edition is recommended; if you have read novels from the same period before, you will adapt faster.

What kind of writer is Oliphant?

Margaret Oliphant (1828–1897) was a prolific Victorian English novelist whose works often deal with family life, social class, and women's circumstances, in a delicate and often ironic style. She was not among the most famous writers of the first rank, but she is valuable for understanding the everyday writing of the period.

What should I keep in mind when using this ebook?

This is a public-domain English ebook released by Project Gutenberg and is a free resource; the formatting is mainly plain text and may lack modern annotations. Reading software that supports dictionary lookup and annotation is recommended for handling unfamiliar words and long sentences.

Comments

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About the author

Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant Author · British (Scottish) · 1828–1897

Mrs. Oliphant (Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant, 1828–1897) was a prolific Scottish novelist, historical writer and biographer of the Victorian era. Born in Wallyford, she gained fame in 1849 with Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland. In 1852 she married her cousin Frank Oliphant; widowed in 1859, she supported her children by her pen and published more than a hundred works in her lifetime. The library holds 90 of her works, including the Carlingford Chronicles, Salem Chapel, Miss Marjoribanks, supernatural tales, Hester, Kirsteen and the autobiography The Days of My Life. She is known for her delicate, humorous portrayals of small-town life and for her historical and biographical writing, and stands as a representative professional woman writer of the Victorian period.