Books with author Mrs. Oliphant (Margaret)

"She who held the reorganisation of society in Carlingford in her hands was a woman with a mission" Lucilla Marjoribanks is determined to look after her widowed father and become 'the sunshine of his life' whether he likes it or not. Once installed back at home and presiding over her father's drawing room, she launches herself into Carlingford society, aiming to raise the tone with her select evening parties. Lucilla is optimistic, resourceful and completely without self-doubt, bt will her indomitable nature diminish her marriage prospects? Will she marry the wrong man to save herself from eternal spinsterhood? With its superbly flawed heroine, is Marjoribanks (1866) is a wonderfully comic depiction of the conventions and proprieties that rule a vacuous society. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Colonel and Mrs Kingsward have been travelling in Germany with their three eldest children, for the health of Mrs Kingsward. Just after the Colonel returns to London, their daughter Bee becomes engaged to Aubrey Leigh, a young man of independent means. But a vindictive "lady" writes to Colonel Kingsward, enclosing a note on which she has forged a date, claiming Aubrey is under a moral obligation to marry her. Thus Colonel Kingsward forbids Bee's engagement. But when Bee and her mother hear Aubrey's story, it is very different from what the woman, Miss Lance, has put forward. Miss Lance had been an inseparable friend of Aubrey's wife - so much so that even marriage did not prevent Miss Lance from continuing her intense friendship with his wife. And after his wife's death Miss Lance was determined to compromise Aubrey. The Kingsward family is destined to be entangled again with this adventuress, who has an uncanny ability to manipulate people, especially men.

CHAPTER I . When Charlie Kingsward fled from Oxford, half mad with disappointment and misery, he had no idea or intention about the future left in his mind. He had come to one of those strange passes in life beyond which the imagination does not go. He had been rejected with that deepest contumely which takes the aspect of the sweetest kindness, when a woman affects the most innocent suspicion at the climax to which, consciously or unconsciously, she has been working up. “ Oh, my poor boy, was that what you were thinking of?” There is no way in which a blow can be administered with such sharp and keen effect. It made the young man’s brain, which was only an ordinary brain, and for some time had exercised but small restraining power upon him in the hurry and sweep of his feelings, reel. When he pulled the door upon him of those gardens of Aminda, that fool’s paradise in which he had been wasting his youth, and which were represented in his case by a very ordinary suburban garden in that part of Oxford called the Parks, his rejected and disappointed passion had every possible auxiliary emotion to make it unbearable. Keen mortification, humiliation, the sharp sense of being mocked and deceived ; the sudden conviction of having given what seemed to the half-maddened boy his whole life, for nothing whipped him like the lashes of the Furies. In most of the crises of life the thought what to do next occurs with almost the rapidity of lightning after a great catastrophe, but Charlie felt as if there was nothing beyond. The whole world had crumbled about him. There was no next step ; his very fooling had failed him. He rushed back to his rooms by instinct, as a wounded creature would rush to its lair, but on his way was met by eager groups returning from the “ Schools,” in which he ought to have been, discussing among each other the stiffness of the papers, and how they had been done. This would scarcely add to his pain, but it added to that sickening effort of absolute failure of the demolition of everything around and before him, which was what he felt the most. They made the impossible more impossible still, and cut off every retreat. When he stood in his room, amid all the useless books which he had not opened for days or weeks, and heard the others mounting the staircase outside his locked door, it seemed to the unhappy young man as though the floor under his feet was the last spot on which standing ground was possible, and that beyond and around there was nothing but chaos. For what reason and on what impulse he rushed to London it would be difficult to tell. He had little money, few friends — or rather none who were not also the friends of his family — no idea or intention of doing anything.

The beautiful old pre-Elizabethan house and estate of Whiteladies is strictly entailed. The two ladies in their late fifties who live there, Susan and Augustine Austin, are the daughters of the prior possessor. Augustine, who lives and dresses as a penitent nun, believes Whiteladies is cursed. The ladies have partially raised the current possessor, Herbert, and his sister Reine. But now he is dying in Switzerland; and once he dies the sisters must leave the only home they have ever had. The estate will go to the presumptive heir-at-law Mr Farrel-Austin (a man they deeply dislike), unless the missing branch of the family can be found, having the true heir-at-law.

15-year-old Colin Campbell has grown up on his parents' farm, Ramore, on the beautiful Holy Loch; and soon he will be attending Glasgow University to study for the ministry. By chance, he saves the life of a young man, Harry, the son of Sir Thomas Frankland. The two boys do not like each other, but the result is that Colin is occasionally invited to the Castle and falls in love with a witty, flirtatious girl, Matty, whose place in the social order is far above his. We follow him through his adventures at University, and as a summer tutor at a great house, where once again he is thrown into Matty's company. Throughout this novel are long, metaphysical discussions between Colin and his even more serious friend Lauderdale regarding Christianity and the Kirk of Scotland. Later he makes a foolish decision in the hope of being near Matty. Volume 2 changes both locale and characters when Colin must travel to Italy for his health, accompanied by Lauderdale. The second volume is almost a separate novel, a sequel to the first. While traveling, Colin and his friend find themselves emotionally caught up with a dying man and his sister, the Merediths, and set up house with them at Frascati near Rome. Again Colin will make a hasty decision which may affect his whole life.

Written concurrently with her autobiography, Kirsteen follows, in allegorical details, the life of its author, Margaret Oliphant.It shows the struggles and tribulations of an artist (in the book, the main character is a dressmaker), amidst changing fashions and tastes.An engrossing novel full of interesting characters and fascinating descriptions, Kirtseen is a lost novel that deserves more attention for its power and truth.This edition has been optimized for Kindle with a functioning table of contents.