OLIPHANT, LAURENCE (1829-1888), British author, son of Anthony Oliphant (1793-1859), was born at Cape Town. His father was then attorney-general in Cape Colony, but was soon transferred as chief-justice to Ceylon. The boy's education was of the most desultory kind. In the years 1848 and 1849 he accompanied his parents on a tour on the continent of Europe. In 1851 he accompanied Jung Bahadur from Colombo to Nepal and found material for his first book, A Journey to Katmandu (1852). From Nepal he returned to Ceylon, and thence to Eng land, then to Russia, after which he wrote The Russian Shores of the Black Sea (1853). Between 1853 and 1861 he was suc cessively secretary to Lord Elgin during the negotiation of the Canada Reciprocity treaty at Washington, the companion of the duke of Newcastle on a visit to the Circassian coast during the Crimean War, and Lord Elgin's private secretary on his expedition to China. Each of these experiences produced a pleasant book of travel. In 1861 he was appointed first secretary in Japan, and might have made a successful diplomatic career if it had not been interrupted, almost at the outset, by a night attack on the legation, in which he nearly lost his life. It seems probable that he never properly recovered from this affair. He returned to England and resigned the service, and was elected to parliament in 1865 for the Stirling Burghs.
Oliphant did not show any conspicuous parliamentary ability, but made a great success by his vivacious and witty novel, Picca dilly (187o). He fell, however, under the influence of the spiritualist prophet Thomas Lake Harris, who about 186i had organized a small community, the Brotherhood of the New Life, which at this time was settled at Brocton on Lake Erie where Oliphant spent many years living as a farm labourer. As late
as December 1878 he continued to believe that Harris was an incarnation of the Deity.
In 1879 he visited Palestine and in 1881 he crossed again to America. On this visit he finally broke with Harris. He and his wife (Miss Alice Le Strange) settled at Haifa in Palestine.
There they wrote together the strange book called Sympneu mata: Evolutionary Forces now active in Man (1884), and in the next year Oliphant produced there his novel Masollam, which may be taken to contain its author's latest views with regard to the personage whom he long considered as "a new Avatar." One of his cleverest works, Altiora peto, had been published in 1883. In 1886 his wife died of fever. He was persuaded that after death he was in much closer relation with her than when she was still alive, and conceived that it was under her influence that he wrote his Scientific Religion. In November 1887 he went to England to publish that book. By the Whitsuntide of 1888 he had completed it and started for America. Oliphant married, as his second wife, a granddaughter of Robert Owen. They were starting for Haifa, when he died, at Twickenham, on Dec. 23, 1888. Oliphant was a brilliant writer and talker, and a notable figure in any society.