Margaret Oliphant, one of the most prolific and popular Victorian novelists, essayists, and reviewers, has been compared both in her day and our own to George Eliot. Oliphant wrote domestic novels that richly represent the broad social, political, and religious contexts of Victorian England. The Broadview edition of Phoebe Junior, the last novel in Oliphant's Chronicles of Carlingford series, restores the earliest extant text.

The supplemental materials provide a rich background for examining key nineteenth-century issues such as religion and church reform, gender and the woman question, society and politics. They include excerpts from contemporary novels and poetry; newspaper articles; reviews; essays; polemic on religion and church reform; materials on gender and the woman question, and on etiquette and dress.