Born in Wallyford, Scotland

Margaret Oliphant (née Wilson) was born on 4 April 1828 in Wallyford, a small village near Musselburgh in East Lothian, Scotland. She was the daughter of Francis Wilson, a customs clerk, and Margaret Oliphant Wilson, whose maiden name she would later adopt as a professional pen name after marrying her cousin, also named Oliphant.

Raised in a modest lower-middle-class household, Margaret grew up largely in Scotland, with her family later moving to Liverpool. Her mother was an avid reader and storyteller who nurtured Margaret's early love of literature and history, encouraging the imaginative and literary talents that would define her later career.

Unlike many women of her era, Margaret received relatively little formal schooling, but she was largely self-taught through voracious reading, absorbing novels, historical works, and periodicals available in her home. This autodidactic foundation would prove essential, as she went on to become one of the most prolific and versatile writers of the Victorian era, producing nearly one hundred novels, biographies, historical works, and countless essays for magazines such as Blackwood's Magazine.

Her humble Scottish origins and the financial pressures she would face throughout her life — supporting not only herself but an extended family — shaped her relentless work ethic and her clear-eyed, often satirical portrayals of provincial and domestic life in her fiction.