Margaret Oliphant Wilson, Scottish novelist, daughter of Francis Wilson and his wife Margaret Oliphant, was born at Wallyford, near Musselburgh, Midlothian, Scotland, April 4, 1828. She published her first novel, "Some Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland of Sunnyside," in 1849, and thereafter produced one or more novels a year for the rest of her life, her total production numbering over one hundred in addition to many articles contributed to periodicals. In 1852 she was married to her cousin, Francis Oliphant, who died in 1859 in Rome, where they had gone for his health. She was now obliged to write continuously to support her three children. Two years after her daughter's death in 1864 she went to live near Eton, to give her two boys the advantages of that school. She died in Wimbleton, June 25, 1897, of cancer.

Fireside Library. Nos. 102, 124, 129, 143
Waverley Library (quarto). No. 94, 226, 231