Historical Fiction Oliphant, Margaret: Salem Chapel. V1 15 Feb 2011

[Rajmahid]

This is my first ebook post here (other than doing "smartquote-correcting" of HarryT's Mapp & Lucia Omnibus) so please don't hesitate to point out any errors in protocol or other such matters

"Salem Chapel" is part of a larger body of work entitled The Chronicles of Carlingford, a series of cyclical novels written partly in imitation of Anthony Trollope’s Barchester series set against the background of her other remarkable books in the same series.

Compared favorably with Trollope by many Victorian novel critics, Margaret Oliphant (1828 - 1897) was a Scottish novelist and historical writer, and daughter of Francis Wilson. She was born at Wallyford, near Musselburgh, East Lothian.

Oliphant is an underrated figure in the history of the Victorian novel. She was an incredibly prolific writer of novels, biographies and history. Virago Press have republished a number of her best novels, including the Chronicles. This helped bring about a mini revival, but due to their limited distribution, it hasn't done the scope of her finest books due justice.

The Chronicles of Carlingford first appeared in Blackwood's Magazine (1862 -1865) and republished separately as:

* The Rector (1863)
* Doctor's Family (1863)
* Salem Chapel (1863)
* The Perpetual Curate (1864)
* Miss Marjoribanks (1866)
* Phoebe Junior (1876)

All but "Salem Chapel" are available in ebook formats on Project Gutenberg.

The "Salem Chapel" ebook presented here for your enjoyment was totally reformatted and corrected from a digitized OCR of an 1870 edition on Open Library. I know of no other usable ebook version of it, free or retail.

To re-quote Sparrow, a valuable contributor here: "The English literary critic Q. D. Leavis declared Lucilla to be the 'missing link' in Victorian literature between Jane Austen's Emma and George Eliot's Dorothea Brooke, and 'more entertaining, more impressive and more likeable than either'. Many readers have also seen Lucilla Marjoribanks as a literary precursor to E. F. Benson's comic creation Emmeline Lucas (Lucia)."

I couldn't agree more!

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