The son of the attorney-general of Cape Colony in South Africa, Oliphant studied law, but left his studies to travel. He accompanied Jung Bahadur from Ceylon to Nepal in 1851 and the following year published his first book, A Journey to Katmandu. He returned to England and again took up his law studies, eventually passing a bar examination. He then traveled to Russia and in 1853 published The Russian Shores of the Black Sea. Later that year, he became private secretary to Lord Elgin and accompanied him on many of his journeys over the next 8 years. In 1861, he was appointed first secretary in Japan, but his stay there was cut short by an attack on the legation which almost cost him his life. He again returned to England and in 1865 was elected MP for Stirling. He left parliament in 1868, having come under the influence of Thomas Lake Harris, the spiritualist, and moved to a farm in Brocton, New York where he spent the next 3 years. On his return to England, he became a correspondent for the Times and covered the Franco-German war. He then settled in Paris where he met and married Alice le Strange. He returned to Brocton in 1873 and worked with Harris on raising finances for the community. Oliphant developed a belief in a Jewish state in Palestine and traveled there in 1879. In 1881, he returned to America and ended his relationship with Harris. He and his wife then returned to Palestine and settled in Haifa. In 1886, his wife died from a fever and he returned to England in 1887. He remarried, but died shortly thereafter in 1888. His other works include Minnesota and the Far West (1855), Picadilly (1870), Tender Recollections of Irene Macgillicuddy (1877), Land of Gilead (1881), Traits and Travesties, Social & Political (1882), Altioro Peto (1883), Masollam (1885), Moss From a Rolling Stone (1887) and Scientific Religion (1888). |
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