Miss Marjoribanks

By Mrs. Oliphant and Margaret Oliphant

Book Overview

"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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140436308
• ISBN13: 9780140436303
• Release Date: June 1999
• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 0.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 5.1" x 7.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Margaret Oliphant

I have done extensive research on Margaret Oliphant. She is one of the most productive women writers of her time and yet, often is overlooked. I urge anyone to read her work and self-titled biography.

An absolute delight!

What a great find, and refreshing as it lacks much of the high melodrama so common in most 19th century literature. Miss Lucilla Marjoribanks comes home from school determined to be a comfort to dear papa and sets the good doctor and the entire town on their ears, with her brilliant manipulations. The characters are wonderful, the story has lots of ups and downs that Lucilla is always capable of meeting with great ingenuity and fortitude. There are many wonderful moments and lots of laughter along with a few tears. Higly recommended, particularly for anyone who enjoys 19th century English literature.

An unacknowledged gem!

This must be one of the funniest books I've ever read--I hadn't laughed out loud like this since Catch-22. The character of Miss Marjoribanks (that's pronounced "Marchbanks") is used by Oliphant both as a vehicle for social satire in the Victorian community and as an instrument to examine female modes of power in the Victorian home. The scene in which Miss Marjoribanks figuratively usurps her father's role as patriarch of the house by appropriating his place at the breakfast table is hilarious. Oliphant's book is wonderfully enjoyable and furtively serious--it may be light in tone, but it reveals a great deal about how a resourceful Victorian woman might seek modes and expressions of power within parameters that are very limiting.The main character of Miss Marjoribanks is not intended to "grow" or "develop"--part of the pleasure of her characterization and her story is in witnessing how her single-minded mania as social director of her community compells her to overcome the obstacles thrown in her way by the novel's narrative. Why should we arbitrarily expose this book to aesthetic standards created by a handful of canonical novels? Miss Marjoribanks's characterization is as valid as any found in Austen or Trollope (though not necessarily as great as the best of them)--we must keep in mind that there was much more to Victorian fiction than what is revealed in the small quantity of canonized examples still read today. Oliphant was immensely popular in her day, she was Queen Victoria's favorite writer, and there were many contemporary critics who considered her to be one of the best novelists of that period.In short, Oliphant's Miss Marjoribanks is a comic masterpiece, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to any reader of 19th-century British fiction.

Light and fun

I enjoyed this book much more than I expected. I came to love the character of Miss Lucilla Marjoribanks. She's a little over the top, and Oliphant has fun with Lucilla's extensive charm and "strength of mind". I found myself laughing as Lucilla shaped society in her town. The book is a fun and easy read...definitely recommended.

Funny and fetching

If you were to cross Jane Austen's Emma Woodhouse with E. F. Benson's Lucia, the result (psychologically as well as chronologically) would be Margaret Oliphant's triumphant queen of Carlingford society, Lucilla Marjoribanks. Determined to show everyone an entertaining time (ostensibly "to be a comfort to dear Papa," even though her father tends to withdraw entirely from her noisy gatherings), the self-centered but always ingenious Lucilla engineers social triumph after social triumph in this very amusing mid-Victorian novel. There were many moments when I laughed out loud, or was genuinely surprised by Lucilla's cleverness in overcoming momentary catastrophes. This is the perfect book for anyone who has loved Austen, Trollope, or Elzabeth Gaskell's WIVES AND DAUGHTERS.