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Type of bind: Audio Cassette
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9781556857485
Format: Unabridged
ISBN number: 1556857489
Label: Audio Book Contractors
Manufacturer: Audio Book Contractors
Printing Date: January 30, 2002
Publishing house: Audio Book Contractors
Sale Popularity Level: 3823012
Studio: Audio Book Contractors
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Product Description:
The esteemed English critic Q. D. Leavis declared Margaret Oliphant's heroine Lucilla to be the 'missing link' in nineteenth-century literature between Jane Austen's Emma and George Eliot's Dorothea Brooke, and 'more entertaining, more impressive, and more likeable than either.' Miss Marjoribanks is perhaps the most famous novel in The Chronicles of Carlingford--Oliphant's popular series of short stories and novels chronicling the middle-class mores of a fictional English provincial town. The novel's heroine, Lucilla Marjoribanks, returns home to tend her widowed father and soon launches herself into Carlingford society, aiming to raise the tone with her select Thursday evening parties. Optimistic, resourceful, and blithely unimpeded by self-doubt, Lucilla is a superior being in every way, not least in relation to men. Margaret Oliphant's acclaimed biographer, Elisabeth Jay, has edited and introduced this Penguin Classics edition.
'A tour de force . . . full of wit, surprises, and intrigue . . . we can imagine Jane Austen reading Miss Marjoribanks with enjoyment and approval in the Elysian Fields.' --Q. D. Leavis
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Rated by buyers 
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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.
Rated by buyers 
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Maybe I've maxed out on 19th Century British Lit inane young women. I really looked forward to this, but was disappointed. One of the back cover comments reads "A feminist Trollope..." (about Oliphant) - not even close. Trollope is far, far better than this. There are some amusing parts but the characters and plot just don't live up to the hype.
Rated by buyers -
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.
Rated by buyers -
In Miss Marjoribanks, the heroine returns from school to live with her widowed father in the quiet village of Carlingford. Her frequently-avowed purpose is 'to be a comfort to dear papa.' Her true 'mission' is to reform the pitiable mess that passes for society in Grange Lane (where those in the upper ranks of Carlingford society live) through her own wise and benevolent leadership. Extremely heavy in irony, the book continually refers to Lucilla Marjoribanks' gift for social politics as 'genius,' and repeatedly describes her efforts in military or imperial terms.
The back cover of the Penguin Classics edition of Miss Marjoribanks quotes Q.D. Leavis's statement that Lucilla Marjoribanks is "the missing link... between Jane Austen's Emma and George Eliot's Dorothea Brooke, and `more entertaining, more impressive and more likeable than either.'" This is an overstatement, to be sure (Charlotte Yonge's The Clever Woman of the Family is my own choice for missing link - see my Amazon review of that title). Miss Marjoribanks is slightly and superficially akin to Miss Brooke and Miss Woodhouse; but as a work of literature Miss Marjoribanks can hardly be classed with Emma or Middlemarch -- nor are Emma or Dorothea likely to be supplanted by Lucilla in the hearts and minds of most readers. Indeed, Lucilla seems two-dimensional by comparison with Austen's and Eliot's heroines -- hardly more than a caricature of a woman. Perhaps it was Oliphant's intention to show that when women with brains and abilities are prevented from exercising their talents in any but the narrowest domestic and social spheres, they are reduced to mere caricatures of human beings. In any case, taken on its own terms, Miss Marjoribanks is an entertaining read, but not, in my view, Oliphant's best.
Rated by buyers -
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.
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