'I went to one of my clubs to have some tea, and look - but with little hope - for a novel really attractive to me after having finished "Mrs Arthur", and then - a happy surprise, for I had never been prepared for it by any advertisement - I found awaiting me "Carita"! As far as I have gone I like it immensely.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: A.W. Kinglake Print: Book
'I went to one of my clubs to have some tea, and look - but with little hope - for a novel really attractive to me after having finished "Mrs Arthur", and then - a happy surprise, for I had never been prepared for it by any advertisement - I found awaiting me "Carita"! As far as I have gone I like it immensely.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: A.W. Kinglake Print: Book
'My dear Mrs Oliphant, - I cannot help venturing to express the admiration with which I have been reading the "Lover and his Lass." It is by your powerful, truth-seeing imagination, and not by what pedants are prone to describe as "analysis" of character, that you enchant us [...] I "pitied myself," as they say in Cumberland, when I got to the end of the book.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alexander Kinglake Print: Book
'The first opinion I have heard of it [the "Makers of Venice"] is Mr Gladstone's, to whom Mr Macmillan sent it, and who sent back to him at once a letter of four pages saying, first, that he was not going to Venice, as had been reported; and next, that he must contradict himself, and say that he had been in Venice, the book having quite given him that feeling; after which he enters into a question of Venetian political history about Bajamonte, whose very name, I should think, was unknown to most readers, but with whom this amazing old man seems intimately acquainted.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book
Dear Mrs Oliphant, - It is with ceaseless admiration that I have read 'The Duke's Daughter'. My remembrance of what you had told me respecting the origin of your inclination to undertake the narrative put me into the mood for studying it, if so one may speak, instead of too placidly 'reading' your delightful pages, and the effect of this special care was such as to make me think more - more even than ever before - of what - distinguished from 'fancy' - I should call that sound, healthy, that strong Imagination of yours which tells you, and lets you tell others, the very, very truth.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: A.W. Kinglake Print: Book, Unknown
Some little time since, I had the good fortune to find that there was at least one [one in italics] of your delightful books which I had missed - I mean 'In Trust' - and I am only now towards the end of the second volume. I am greatly interested, and more than ever admiring the way in which your powerful yet truth-loving imagination proves able to deal with the mazes of Human Nature.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: A.W. Kinglake Print: Book, Unknown
I have begun the perusal, and I very much hope, and cannot doubt, that your living portraitures of Scripture characters will impress upon many minds an important portion of those evidences of the sacred volume which are so much higher than the "higher criticism", and which have a range of flight beyond its reach.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book, Unknown
'I was captivated by "Margaret Maitland" before the author came to [italic] bribe [end italic] me by the gift of a copy and a too flattering letter [...] Nothing half so true or so touching (in the delineation of Scottish character) has appeared since Galt published his "Annals of the Parish" - and this is purer and deeper than Galt, and even more absolutely and simply true.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Jeffrey Print: Book
'[In The Saturday Review, 19 November 1904], "A Mother" records the books consumed since July by her sixteen-year-old daughter ... [who is] on the point of going in for the "Senior Cambridge" ... :
"Old Mortality", "The Farringdons", "By Mutual Consent" (L. T. Meade), "To Call Her Mine", "Kathrine Regina", and "Self or Bearer" (Besant); "Christmas Carol", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Hypatia", "Concerning Isabel Carnaby", "The Virginians", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Head of the House" (E. Everett-Green), "A Double Thread", "The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent", "Sesame and Lilies", "A Tale of Two Cities".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
'Read "My faithful Johnny" in the Cornhill'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Serial / periodical
On one occasion, he came to me, flourishing a paper wildly in the air...I thought he had suddenly inherited a fortune, or that something of an extreme value had fallen in his way. 'What in heaven's name is it?' I asked. 'This, my friend. For years a certain critic has practically damned my works - said there was nothing really in them - and now this person, whose ability I have always admired despite the fact that I have suffered, has declared: "Stevenson has at last produced one of the best books of the season, and the claim of his friends seems fully justified, for the work is full of genius."' His face was all aglow with feverish excitement. 'Who is this wonderful critic, Stevenson, whose praise you so enjoy? And what bitter things has he said of you before?' 'We will drop the severe things, Moors. You would never guess, if I gave you all morning, who it is who has at last admitted me to be in the front rank of my profession. It is Mrs Oliphant, my dear sir - Mrs Oliphant!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
'I bought for 3s. a novel by Mrs Oliphant, ''An English Squire'', with the same irritable young man one knows so well. A very clever description of the feelings of a widow on losing a dull husband she did not much care for...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Book
My dear Mrs Oliphant, I address you freely, because I have a full heart just now; and I had rather speak foolishly out of my enthusiasm than hold my tongue afterwards in a state of clear and cowardly common sense.
How you wrote A Beleaguered City, I cannot think; I had not supposed it had been in you; but God bless you, in all soberness, for having done so. I look in vain for anything like it, since the Pilgrim’s Progress − or before. How it might read to posterity, is a thing neither I nor you can tell; but to your contemporaries, or to some of them, it will be truly good news. And this, after all, is the great affair; to these, we speak with comprehensible accents; to posterity, or to all but a few of them, nous autres morts will speak a flat, unresonant dialect.
Whether I like the Maire more than Lecanus, or more than the curé, I cannot tell. They are all three admirably touched, and full of significance to the main issue. All their humours tell; they show our Babel, toiling here a while, as we hope, in the midst of a clearer universe. Shelley has said something in poetry, which youe have said over again, and most pleasantly glossed upon, in the idiosyncrasies of all your characters: ‘Life like a dome of many coloured glass (I quote from a bad, a heartless memory) stains the white radiance of eternity’.
I have thought often, how many arrows an author shoots into the air − I daresay, so have you. In the Beleaguered City, you have lodged some three or four in my heart. I have cried heartily; I feel the better for my tears; and I want to thank you. Let that excuse this otherwise inexcusable letter and believe me gratefully your very much obliged reader
Robert Louis Stevenson
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical