The laird of Norlaw

The Laird of Norlaw is one of Margaret Oliphant’s Victorian Scottish novels, working in the territory of Scottish landed gentry life that her Scottish fiction often explored. The laird of the title is the proprietor of the Norlaw estate, with the laird being the traditional Scottish term for the landowner of a particular property and his title functioning as both his personal designation and his political and social position in the wider Scottish landed system.

Oliphant was one of the most prolific and respected writers of the Victorian era, with a working career that produced more than ninety novels and hundreds of articles. Her Scottish novels in particular drew on her own roots in the Borders region of Scotland and on the wider Scottish literary tradition that Walter Scott had helped to establish.

The laird as a literary figure in nineteenth century Scottish fiction often served as the focus for stories about the changing relationship between the traditional landed gentry and the modernizing pressures of nineteenth century British society. The laird’s responsibilities to his tenants, his place in the wider community, his family obligations, and the various practical and moral choices that his position required all gave Oliphant material that she could develop with the kind of careful psychological observation that her best fiction shows.

For readers interested in Victorian Scottish fiction, in the wider catalogue of Margaret Oliphant beyond her famous Carlingford novels, or in the long tradition of Scottish literary realism, The Laird of Norlaw is worth knowing.