In 1852 she married her cousin, Francis Wilson Oliphant, an artist in stained glass, and settled in London. Widowed in 1859, she began a wearisome struggle to provide, by writing, for her children and later for her brother's children. Between 1849 and her death she published more than 100 separate books of which the best known are the Chronicles of Carlingford, published anonymously 1863–66. These four novels of contemporary life in a small town include Miss Marjoribanks (1866), a young lady's attempts at social climbing, and Salem Chapel (1863), a young intelligent nonconformist minister's trials with his narrow-minded congregation. The best of her Scottish novels are Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland (1849), Merkland (1851), and Kirsteen (1890). Other works include A Beleaguered City (1880) and A Little Pilgrim in the Unseen (1882), excursions into the realm of the supernatural. She also published Annals of a Publishing House: William Blackwood and his Sons (1897), a work of importance to literary historians. She wrote with sympathy, insight, and humour about domestic life.