Only parts were written with a wider audience in mind: she had originally intended the "Autobiography" for her son, but he died before she had finished it. Opinions on Oliphant's work are split, with some critics seeing her as a "domestic novelist", while others recognize her work as influential and important to the Victorian literature canon. Critical reception from Oliphant's contemporaries is divided as well. Among those who were not in favour of Oliphant was John Skelton, who took the view that Oliphant wrote too much and too fast. Writing a "Blackwood's" article called "A Little Chat About Mrs. Oliphant", he asked, "Had Mrs. Oliphant concentrated her powers, what might she not have done? We might have had another Charlotte Brontë or another George Eliot." Not all of the contemporary reception was negative, though. James admired Oliphant's supernatural fiction, concluding that "the religious ghost story, as it may be called, was never done better than by Mrs. Oliphant in "The Open Door" and "A Beleaguered City"". Mary Butts lauded Oliphant's ghost story "The Library Window", describing it as "one masterpiece of sober loveliness". More modern critics of Oliphant's work include Virginia Woolf, who asked in "Three Guineas" whether Oliphant's autobiography does not lead the reader "to deplore the fact that Mrs. Oliphant sold her brain, her very admirable brain, prostituted her culture and enslaved her intellectual liberty in order that she might earn her living and educate her children." However, even modern critics are divided on Oliphant's work. Authors Gilbert and Gubar did not include Oliphant in their "Great tradition" of women's writing because she did not question or challenge the patriarchy at the time of her life and writing. Interest in Mrs Oliphant's work declined in the 20th century. In the mid-1980s, a small-scale revival was led by the publishers Alan Sutton and Virago Press, centred on the Carlingford series and some similarities of subject-matter with the work of Anthony Trollope. Penguin Books in 1999 published an edition of "Miss Marjoribanks" (1866). "Hester" (1873) was reissued in 2003 by Oxford World's Classics. In 2007–2009, the Gloucester publisher Dodo Press reprinted half a dozen of Oliphant's works.