Laurence Oliphant
Encyclopedia
Laurence Oliphant was a British
author, traveller, diplomat
, and mystic
. Best known for his 1870 satirical novel Piccadilly, he spent a decade in later life under the influence of the spiritualist prophet
Thomas Lake Harris
.
(1793–1859). At the time of his son's birth, Sir Anthony was attorney-general in Cape Colony
, but was soon transferred as Chief Justice
to Ceylon. Laurence's father was a younger son of a Scottish landed family. He spent his early childhood in Colombo
, where his father purchased a home called Alcove in Captains Gardens, subsequently known as Maha Nuge Gardens
. Sir Anthony and his son Laurence have been credited with bringing tea
to Ceylon and growing 30 tea plants brought over from China
- the tea was grown on the Oliphant Estate in Nuwara Eliya
. The boy's education was of the most desultory kind, the most successful part belonging to the years 1848 and 1849, when he and his parents toured Europe. In 1851, he accompanied Jung Bahadur from Colombo
to Nepal
. He passed an agreeable time there, and saw enough that was new to enable him to write his first book, A Journey to Katmandu (1852).
In "The Question of Palestine: British-Jewish-Arab Relations, 1914-1918 By Isaiah Friedman", Laurence Oliphant's involvement with the Sultanate of the Ottoman Empire clearly extends beyond 1888. The differing accounts are difficult to reconcile.
, and then with the Scottish bar, so far at least as to pass an examination in Roman law
.
. The outcome of that tour was his book, The Russian Shores of the Black Sea (1853).
Between 1853 and 1861, Oliphant was successively secretary to Lord Elgin
during the negotiation of the Canada Reciprocity Treaty in Washington
, and the companion of the Duke of Newcastle
on a visit to the Circassia
n coast during the Crimean War
.
Oliphant was Lord Elgin
's private secretary on his expedition to China
and Japan
. In 1861, he was appointed First Secretary of the British Legation in Japan under Minister Plenipotentiary (later Sir) Rutherford Alcock
, and might have made a successful diplomatic career if it had not been interrupted, almost at the outset, by a nighttime attack on the legation, in which he nearly lost his life. He permanently lost the full use of his hand. It seems probable that he never properly recovered from this episode.
Oliphant arrived at Edo
at the end of June 1861. On the evening of 5 July, a nighttime attack was made on the legation by xenophobic ronin
. His pistol
s having been in their locked travelling box, Oliphant rushed out with a hunting-whip, and was attacked by a Japanese with a heavy two-handed sword
. A beam, invisible in the darkness, interfered with the blows, but Oliphant was severely wounded, and sent on board ship to recover. He had to return to England after a visit to Korea, where he discovered a Russian force occupying a secluded bay, and obtained their withdrawal.
See Lawrence Oliphant's Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's mission to China and Japan, 1857-8-9 (2 volumes), 1859 (reprinted by Oxford University Press, 1970) {ISBN 978-0196410043}
. While he did not show any conspicuous parliamentary ability, he was made a great success by his vivacious and witty novel, Piccadilly (1870). He fell, however, under the influence of the spiritualist prophet Thomas Lake Harris
, who about 1861 had organized a small community, the Brotherhood of the New Life, which was settled in Brocton
on Lake Erie
, and subsequently moved to Santa Rosa, California
.
After three years, this was permitted to Oliphant, who, once more in Europe, worked as correspondent for The Times
during the Franco-German War, and afterwards spent several years in Paris in the service thereof. There he met, through his mother, his future wife: Alice le Strange, daughter of the late Henry Styleman le Strange of Hunstanton, Norfolk. Oliphant married Alice at St. George's, Hanover Square, London on 8 June 1872.
In 1873 he went back to Brocton, taking with him his wife and mother. During the years that followed he continued to be employed in the service of the community and its head, yet in work very different from that with which he had been occupied on his first sojourn. His new work was chiefly financial, and took him much to New York and a good deal to England. As late as December 1878, he continued to believe that Harris was an incarnation of the Deity.
, and in 1879 he made an extensive journey in that country, going also to Constantinople, in the vain hope of obtaining a lease on the northern half of the Holy Land
with a view to settling large numbers of Jews there
(this was before the first wave of Jewish settlement
of the Zionists
in 1882). This he conceived would be an easy task from a financial point of view, as there were so many in England and America anxious to fulfill the prophecies, and bring about the End of Days
. In this period, with financial support from Christadelphians
and other Christian and Jewish individuals in Britain, Olipant collected funds to purchase land and settle Jewish refugees in the Galilee. In 1882, he took Naftali Herz Imber
(later known as the author of the Hatikvah
lyrics) as his secretary.
Oliphant landed once more in England without having accomplished anything definite; but his wife, who had been banished from him for years and had been living in California
, was allowed to rejoin him, and they went to Egypt
together. In 1881, he crossed again to America. It was on that visit that he became utterly disgusted with Harris, and finally split from him.
' German Colony
in Haifa
, and another about twelve miles off at Dalieh
on Mount Carmel
.
It was in Haifa in 1884 that they wrote together the strange book Sympneumata: Evolutionary Forces Now Active in Man, and in the next year Oliphant produced his novel Masollam, which may be taken to contain its author's latest views with regard to the personage whom he long considered a new Avatar
. One of his cleverest works, Altiora Peto had been published in 1883.
In December 1885 an attack of fever, caught on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, resulted in the death of his wife on 2 January 1886, whose constitution had been undermined by the hardships of her American life. Oliphant was too unsteady with fever to attend her funeral, and was unable to comprehend the magnitude of the tragedy that had befallen him. He was persuaded that after death he was in much closer contact with her than when she was still alive, and conceived that it was under her influence that he wrote the book to which he gave the title Scientific Religion.
the Socialist. They were married in Malvern, and meant to go to Haifa, but Oliphant took very ill at York House, Twickenham
, and died there on 23 December 1888. His obituary in the Times
said of him, "Seldom has there been a more romantic or amply filled career; never, perhaps, a stranger or more apparently contradictory personality".
, a steampunk
novel by Bruce Sterling
and William Gibson
, presents Oliphant as an agent of British intelligence operating in London.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
author, traveller, diplomat
Diplomacy
Diplomacy is the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states...
, and mystic
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
. Best known for his 1870 satirical novel Piccadilly, he spent a decade in later life under the influence of the spiritualist prophet
Prophet
In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...
Thomas Lake Harris
Thomas Lake Harris
Thomas Lake Harris was an American mystic, spiritualistic prophet and poet.-Early life:Harris was born at Fenny Stratford in Buckinghamshire, England. His parents were Calvinistic Baptists, and very poor. They settled at Utica, New York, when Harris was five years old...
.
Early life
Laurence Oliphant was the only child of Sir Anthony OliphantAnthony Oliphant
Hon. Sir Anthony Oliphant was a British lawyer who was appointed Chief Justice of Ceylon by Her Majesty's Government. Prior to his appointment, Sir Anthony was Attorney General in the Cape Colony....
(1793–1859). At the time of his son's birth, Sir Anthony was attorney-general in Cape Colony
Cape Colony
The Cape Colony, part of modern South Africa, was established by the Dutch East India Company in 1652, with the founding of Cape Town. It was subsequently occupied by the British in 1795 when the Netherlands were occupied by revolutionary France, so that the French revolutionaries could not take...
, but was soon transferred as Chief Justice
Chief Justice
The Chief Justice in many countries is the name for the presiding member of a Supreme Court in Commonwealth or other countries with an Anglo-Saxon justice system based on English common law, such as the Supreme Court of Canada, the Constitutional Court of South Africa, the Court of Final Appeal of...
to Ceylon. Laurence's father was a younger son of a Scottish landed family. He spent his early childhood in Colombo
Colombo
Colombo is the largest city of Sri Lanka. It is located on the west coast of the island and adjacent to Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte, the capital of Sri Lanka. Colombo is often referred to as the capital of the country, since Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte is a satellite city of Colombo...
, where his father purchased a home called Alcove in Captains Gardens, subsequently known as Maha Nuge Gardens
Maha Nuge Gardens
Maha Nuge Gardens is a private lane located in the Kollupitiya district in the city of Colombo . Even though it is called a garden, nothing of any importance is grown here. The lane runs off the main Colombo highway called Galle Road,leading to the commercial district of Fort, via the Galle Face...
. Sir Anthony and his son Laurence have been credited with bringing tea
Tea
Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by adding cured leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant to hot water. The term also refers to the plant itself. After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world...
to Ceylon and growing 30 tea plants brought over from China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
- the tea was grown on the Oliphant Estate in Nuwara Eliya
Nuwara Eliya
Nuwara Eliya , meaning "city on the plain " or "city of light", is a town in the central highlands of Sri Lanka with a picturesque landscape and temperate climate. It is located at an altitude of 1,868 m and is considered to be the most important location for Tea production in Sri Lanka...
. The boy's education was of the most desultory kind, the most successful part belonging to the years 1848 and 1849, when he and his parents toured Europe. In 1851, he accompanied Jung Bahadur from Colombo
Colombo
Colombo is the largest city of Sri Lanka. It is located on the west coast of the island and adjacent to Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte, the capital of Sri Lanka. Colombo is often referred to as the capital of the country, since Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte is a satellite city of Colombo...
to Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
. He passed an agreeable time there, and saw enough that was new to enable him to write his first book, A Journey to Katmandu (1852).
In "The Question of Palestine: British-Jewish-Arab Relations, 1914-1918 By Isaiah Friedman", Laurence Oliphant's involvement with the Sultanate of the Ottoman Empire clearly extends beyond 1888. The differing accounts are difficult to reconcile.
The bar
From Nepal Oliphant returned to Ceylon and thence to England, dallied a little with the English bar, so far at least as to eat dinners at Lincoln's InnLincoln's Inn
The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn. Although Lincoln's Inn is able to trace its official records beyond...
, and then with the Scottish bar, so far at least as to pass an examination in Roman law
Roman law
Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence — from the Twelve...
.
Russia, Canada, Circassia
Oliphant was more happily inspired when he threw over his legal studies and went to travel in RussiaRussia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. The outcome of that tour was his book, The Russian Shores of the Black Sea (1853).
Between 1853 and 1861, Oliphant was successively secretary to Lord Elgin
James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin
Sir James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin and 12th Earl of Kincardine, KT, GCB, PC , was a British colonial administrator and diplomat...
during the negotiation of the Canada Reciprocity Treaty in Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, and the companion of the Duke of Newcastle
Duke of Newcastle
Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne is a title which has been created three times in British history while the title of Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne has been created once. The title was created for the first time in the Peerage of England in 1664 when William Cavendish, 1st Marquess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne...
on a visit to the Circassia
Circassia
Circassia was an independent mountainous country located in the Caucasus region of Eurasia and was the largest and most important country in the Caucasus. Circassia was located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea...
n coast during the Crimean War
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
.
China and Japan
James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin
Sir James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin and 12th Earl of Kincardine, KT, GCB, PC , was a British colonial administrator and diplomat...
's private secretary on his expedition to China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. In 1861, he was appointed First Secretary of the British Legation in Japan under Minister Plenipotentiary (later Sir) Rutherford Alcock
Rutherford Alcock
Sir Rutherford Alcock KCB was the first British diplomatic representative to live in Japan.-Early life:Alcock was the son of the physician, Dr. Thomas Alcock, who practised at Ealing, near London. As he grew up, Alcock followed his father into the medical profession...
, and might have made a successful diplomatic career if it had not been interrupted, almost at the outset, by a nighttime attack on the legation, in which he nearly lost his life. He permanently lost the full use of his hand. It seems probable that he never properly recovered from this episode.
Oliphant arrived at Edo
Edo
, also romanized as Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868...
at the end of June 1861. On the evening of 5 July, a nighttime attack was made on the legation by xenophobic ronin
Ronin
A or rounin was a Bushi with no lord or master during the feudal period of Japan. A samurai became masterless from the death or fall of his master, or after the loss of his master's favor or privilege....
. His pistol
Pistol
When distinguished as a subset of handguns, a pistol is a handgun with a chamber that is integral with the barrel, as opposed to a revolver, wherein the chamber is separate from the barrel as a revolving cylinder. Typically, pistols have an effective range of about 100 feet.-History:The pistol...
s having been in their locked travelling box, Oliphant rushed out with a hunting-whip, and was attacked by a Japanese with a heavy two-handed sword
Katana
A Japanese sword, or , is one of the traditional bladed weapons of Japan. There are several types of Japanese swords, according to size, field of application and method of manufacture.-Description:...
. A beam, invisible in the darkness, interfered with the blows, but Oliphant was severely wounded, and sent on board ship to recover. He had to return to England after a visit to Korea, where he discovered a Russian force occupying a secluded bay, and obtained their withdrawal.
See Lawrence Oliphant's Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's mission to China and Japan, 1857-8-9 (2 volumes), 1859 (reprinted by Oxford University Press, 1970) {ISBN 978-0196410043}
England
Oliphant returned to England, resigned the service, and was elected to Parliament in 1865 for Stirling BurghsStirling Burghs (UK Parliament constituency)
Stirling Burghs was a district of burghs constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1708 to 1918. The constituency comprised the burghs of Stirling in Stirlingshire, Dunfermline, and Inverkeithing in Fife, Queensferry, in Linlithgowshire , and Culross, which...
. While he did not show any conspicuous parliamentary ability, he was made a great success by his vivacious and witty novel, Piccadilly (1870). He fell, however, under the influence of the spiritualist prophet Thomas Lake Harris
Thomas Lake Harris
Thomas Lake Harris was an American mystic, spiritualistic prophet and poet.-Early life:Harris was born at Fenny Stratford in Buckinghamshire, England. His parents were Calvinistic Baptists, and very poor. They settled at Utica, New York, when Harris was five years old...
, who about 1861 had organized a small community, the Brotherhood of the New Life, which was settled in Brocton
Brocton, New York
Brocton is a village in Chautauqua County, New York, United States.The name was derived by combining the names "Brockway" and "Minton," two prominent local families...
on Lake Erie
Lake Erie
Lake Erie is the fourth largest lake of the five Great Lakes in North America, and the tenth largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has the shortest average water residence time. It is bounded on the north by the...
, and subsequently moved to Santa Rosa, California
Santa Rosa, California
Santa Rosa is the county seat of Sonoma County, California, United States. The 2010 census reported a population of 167,815. Santa Rosa is the largest city in California's Wine Country and fifth largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area, after San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, and Fremont and 26th...
.
Brocton, Paris, Brocton
Harris obtained so strange an ascendancy over Oliphant that the latter left Parliament in 1868, followed Harris to Brocton, and lived there the life of a farm labourer, in obedience to the imperious will of his spiritual guide. It was part of the Brocton régime that members of the community be allowed to return to the outside world from time to time, to earn money for the community.After three years, this was permitted to Oliphant, who, once more in Europe, worked as correspondent for The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
during the Franco-German War, and afterwards spent several years in Paris in the service thereof. There he met, through his mother, his future wife: Alice le Strange, daughter of the late Henry Styleman le Strange of Hunstanton, Norfolk. Oliphant married Alice at St. George's, Hanover Square, London on 8 June 1872.
In 1873 he went back to Brocton, taking with him his wife and mother. During the years that followed he continued to be employed in the service of the community and its head, yet in work very different from that with which he had been occupied on his first sojourn. His new work was chiefly financial, and took him much to New York and a good deal to England. As late as December 1878, he continued to believe that Harris was an incarnation of the Deity.
Palestine, England, America
By that time, however, his mind was occupied with a large project of colonization in PalestinePalestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
, and in 1879 he made an extensive journey in that country, going also to Constantinople, in the vain hope of obtaining a lease on the northern half of the Holy Land
Holy Land
The Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...
with a view to settling large numbers of Jews there
Aliyah
Aliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...
(this was before the first wave of Jewish settlement
First Aliyah
The First Aliyah was the first modern widespread wave of Zionist aliyah. Jews who migrated to Palestine in this wave came mostly from Eastern Europe and from Yemen. This wave of aliyah began in 1881–82 and lasted until 1903. An estimated 25,000–35,000 Jews immigrated to Ottoman Syria during the...
of the Zionists
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
in 1882). This he conceived would be an easy task from a financial point of view, as there were so many in England and America anxious to fulfill the prophecies, and bring about the End of Days
Christian eschatology
Christian eschatology is a major branch of study within Christian theology. Eschatology, from two Greek words meaning last and study , is the study of the end of things, whether the end of an individual life, the end of the age, or the end of the world...
. In this period, with financial support from Christadelphians
Christadelphians
Christadelphians is a Christian group that developed in the United Kingdom and North America in the 19th century...
and other Christian and Jewish individuals in Britain, Olipant collected funds to purchase land and settle Jewish refugees in the Galilee. In 1882, he took Naftali Herz Imber
Naftali Herz Imber
Naphtali Herz Imber was a Jewish poet and Zionist who wrote the lyrics of Hatikvah, the national anthem of the State of Israel.Imber was born in Złoczów , a town in Galicia, Austrian Empire...
(later known as the author of the Hatikvah
Hatikvah
"Hatikvah" is the national anthem of Israel. The anthem was written by Naphtali Herz Imber, a secular Galician Jew from Zolochiv , who moved to the Land of Israel in the early 1880s....
lyrics) as his secretary.
Oliphant landed once more in England without having accomplished anything definite; but his wife, who had been banished from him for years and had been living in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, was allowed to rejoin him, and they went to Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
together. In 1881, he crossed again to America. It was on that visit that he became utterly disgusted with Harris, and finally split from him.
Haifa
While Oliphant at first feared that his wife would not follow him in his renunciation of the prophet, this was not the case, and they settled themselves very agreeably, with one house in the midst of the TemplersTemplers (religious believers)
Templers are members of the Temple Society , a German Protestant sect with roots in the Pietist movement of the Lutheran Church. The Templers were expelled from the church in 1858 because of their millennial beliefs. Their aim was to realize the apocalyptic visions of the prophets of Israel in the...
' German Colony
German Colony, Haifa
The German Colony was established in Haifa in 1868 by the German Templers. It was the first of several colonies established by the group in the Holy Land...
in Haifa
Haifa
Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...
, and another about twelve miles off at Dalieh
Daliyat al-Karmel
Daliyat al-Karmel is a Druze local council in the North District of Israel, located around 20 km southeast of Haifa.-History:The town was given local council status in 1951. However, in 2003 it was merged with nearby Isfiya to create Carmel City...
on Mount Carmel
Mount Carmel
Mount Carmel ; , Kármēlos; , Kurmul or جبل مار إلياس Jabal Mar Elyas 'Mount Saint Elias') is a coastal mountain range in northern Israel stretching from the Mediterranean Sea towards the southeast. Archaeologists have discovered ancient wine and oil presses at various locations on Mt. Carmel...
.
It was in Haifa in 1884 that they wrote together the strange book Sympneumata: Evolutionary Forces Now Active in Man, and in the next year Oliphant produced his novel Masollam, which may be taken to contain its author's latest views with regard to the personage whom he long considered a new Avatar
Avatar
In Hinduism, an avatar is a deliberate descent of a deity to earth, or a descent of the Supreme Being and is mostly translated into English as "incarnation," but more accurately as "appearance" or "manifestation"....
. One of his cleverest works, Altiora Peto had been published in 1883.
In December 1885 an attack of fever, caught on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, resulted in the death of his wife on 2 January 1886, whose constitution had been undermined by the hardships of her American life. Oliphant was too unsteady with fever to attend her funeral, and was unable to comprehend the magnitude of the tragedy that had befallen him. He was persuaded that after death he was in much closer contact with her than when she was still alive, and conceived that it was under her influence that he wrote the book to which he gave the title Scientific Religion.
England again
In November 1887, he went to England to publish that book. By the Whitsuntide of 1888, he had completed it and started for America. There he determined to marry again, his second wife being Rosamond, a granddaughter of Robert OwenRobert Owen
Robert Owen was a Welsh social reformer and one of the founders of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement.Owen's philosophy was based on three intellectual pillars:...
the Socialist. They were married in Malvern, and meant to go to Haifa, but Oliphant took very ill at York House, Twickenham
York House, Twickenham
York House is an historic stately home in Twickenham, England, and currently serves as the Town Hall of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames...
, and died there on 23 December 1888. His obituary in the Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
said of him, "Seldom has there been a more romantic or amply filled career; never, perhaps, a stranger or more apparently contradictory personality".
In fiction
The Difference EngineThe Difference Engine
The Difference Engine is an alternate history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.It posits a Victorian Britain in which great technological and social change has occurred after entrepreneurial inventor Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a mechanical computer .The novel was...
, a steampunk
Steampunk
Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. Steampunk involves a setting where steam power is still widely used—usually Victorian era Britain or "Wild West"-era United...
novel by Bruce Sterling
Bruce Sterling
Michael Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre.-Writings:...
and William Gibson
William Gibson
William Gibson is an American-Canadian science fiction author.William Gibson may also refer to:-Association football:*Will Gibson , Scottish footballer...
, presents Oliphant as an agent of British intelligence operating in London.