Olive (Annotated)

Published in 1850, Olive is a searching Victorian novel of inward formation, domestic feeling, and female vocation. Its heroine, Olive Rothesay, born with a spinal deformity, is excluded from conventional ideals of beauty and marriageability, yet discovers moral authority and artistic purpose. Craik blends sentimental fiction, religious earnestness, and domestic realism, placing the novel within t...