Margaret Oliphant's Curative Gothic Literature
Prolific Scottish novelist Margaret Oliphant (1828–1897), remembered chiefly for her realist fiction and biting literary criticism of contemporary authors, also wrote nineteen supernatural tales. This monograph offers a comprehensive exploration of Oliphant’s Gothic literature, in the light of her religious beliefs, cultural context and experiences of death and mourning, as she survived her husband and all six of her children.

Oliphant’s stories set in the afterlife depict the dead as inhabiting a new existence characterised by spiritual growth, while her tales set on earth attempt contact between the mortal and immortal planes. García-Walsh illustrates Oliphant’s unique theological conception of “afterliving”, which ultimately seeks to eradicate the divide between the living and their deceased loved ones, reimagining death as a liminal passage towards God and divine self-development. This book thus suggests a new direction for Gothic studies by showing how Oliphant’s supernatural fiction provided a means of “curative” writing, transforming the traumatic reality of death into a source of hope. The volume is suited for students, researchers and academics in the disciplines of literature and history, particularly the fields of nineteenth-century studies, Victorian studies and Gothic studies with an interest in women’s writing, theology and mental health/trauma studies.

1147367915
Margaret Oliphant's Curative Gothic Literature
Prolific Scottish novelist Margaret Oliphant (1828–1897), remembered chiefly for her realist fiction and biting literary criticism of contemporary authors, also wrote nineteen supernatural tales. This monograph offers a comprehensive exploration of Oliphant’s Gothic literature, in the light of her religious beliefs, cultural context and experiences of death and mourning, as she survived her husband and all six of her children.

Oliphant’s stories set in the afterlife depict the dead as inhabiting a new existence characterised by spiritual growth, while her tales set on earth attempt contact between the mortal and immortal planes. García-Walsh illustrates Oliphant’s unique theological conception of “afterliving”, which ultimately seeks to eradicate the divide between the living and their deceased loved ones, reimagining death as a liminal passage towards God and divine self-development. This book thus suggests a new direction for Gothic studies by showing how Oliphant’s supernatural fiction provided a means of “curative” writing, transforming the traumatic reality of death into a source of hope. The volume is suited for students, researchers and academics in the disciplines of literature and history, particularly the fields of nineteenth-century studies, Victorian studies and Gothic studies with an interest in women’s writing, theology and mental health/trauma studies.

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Margaret Oliphant's Curative Gothic Literature

Margaret Oliphant's Curative Gothic Literature

by Katerina García-Walsh
Margaret Oliphant's Curative Gothic Literature
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Margaret Oliphant's Curative Gothic Literature

Margaret Oliphant's Curative Gothic Literature

by Katerina García-Walsh

Overview

Prolific Scottish novelist Margaret Oliphant (1828–1897), remembered chiefly for her realist fiction and biting literary criticism of contemporary authors, also wrote nineteen supernatural tales. This monograph offers a comprehensive exploration of Oliphant’s Gothic literature, in the light of her religious beliefs, cultural context and experiences of death and mourning, as she survived her husband and all six of her children.

Oliphant’s stories set in the afterlife depict the dead as inhabiting a new existence characterised by spiritual growth, while her tales set on earth attempt contact between the mortal and immortal planes. García-Walsh illustrates Oliphant’s unique theological conception of “afterliving”, which ultimately seeks to eradicate the divide between the living and their deceased loved ones, reimagining death as a liminal passage towards God and divine self-development. This book thus suggests a new direction for Gothic studies by showing how Oliphant’s supernatural fiction provided a means of “curative” writing, transforming the traumatic reality of death into a source of hope. The volume is suited for students, researchers and academics in the disciplines of literature and history, particularly the fields of nineteenth-century studies, Victorian studies and Gothic studies with an interest in women’s writing, theology and mental health/trauma studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781032998725
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Publication date: 11/14/2025
Series: Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature
Pages: 222
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Katerina García-Walsh is Juan de la Cierva National Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. She was awarded a PhD for her thesis on Spectral Trauma and Narrative Memory in Margaret Oliphant’s Gothic at the University of St Andrews in November 2023.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter I: Realism Beyond Death

Chapter II: Liminal Lands

Chapter III: Ghosts Among the Living

Chapter IV: Curative Connections

Chapter V: Seeking Divine Harmony

Conclusions

Appendices & Bibliographies

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Related Subjects

Literature
Literary Criticism
General & Miscellaneous Literary Criticism
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Literature, Modern->19th century->History and criticism
Literature
Literary Criticism
General & Miscellaneous Literary Criticism
Modern Literature
Literature, Modern->19th century->History and criticism

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