Olive Schreiner

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Standard Name: Schreiner, Olive
Birth Name: Olive Emilie Albertina Schreiner
Pseudonym: Ralph Iron
OS was a political and social activist as well as a writer. Her biographer Liz Stanley says she was internationally probably the best-known feminist writer and theorist from the 1880s through to the 1930s.
Stanley, Liz. “Encountering the Imperial and Colonial Past through Olive Schreiner’s <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland</span&gt”;. Women’s Writing, Vol.
7
, No. 2, pp. 197-19.
198
Much of her writing strongly advocates a more democratic, just, free society, using to do so the art of allegory and the parable. Her early novels were followed by a large number of political essays. Later, she published the feminist testament which made her an icon in the women's movement in the early decades of the twentieth century. She carried on a voluminous correspondence with many family members and friends, the latter including Havelock Ellis , Edward Carpenter , and Karl Pearson . Several volumes of these have been published posthumously, as were two early novels which she deemed unpublishable during her lifetime.
Black and white photograph of Olive Schreiner, seated, with one elbow on a desk and her head resting on that hand. She is wearing a white dress that falls loosely from her shoulders, gathered at the wrists and with ruffles at the throat. Her hair is pinned back with short curls in front.
Black and white photo of Olive Schreiner, head and shoulders only. She looks straight at the camera, her hair short around her face and her neckline high, with ruffles.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Michelene Wandor
Nonetheless, several of her plays have never (in 2008) been staged. One is Wild Diamonds, set in South Africa and seen through the eyes of Olive Schreiner and Cecil Rhodes, which was commissioned...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Michelene Wandor
MW writes here about travel, office parties, poetry readings, Olive Schreiner . Many of her poems are personal (including several on her sons and on her mother's death). The political is implicitly present: in untitled...
Family and Intimate relationships Gillian Slovo
Five hundred people were detained under this law in its first six months. On release they could be re-arrested (as First was as she stood in a phone booth outside the prison, about to tell...
Friends, Associates Gladys Henrietta Schütze
GHS also knew and loved the greatOlive Schreiner .
Schütze, Gladys Henrietta. More Ha’pence Than Kicks. Jarrolds.
128-9
Vernon Lee , she said, was primarily a friend of her scientist husband; they both stayed with her several times. Schütze pondered the paradox...
Occupation Gladys Henrietta Schütze
GHS was ejected during the first world war from the professional associations which she belonged to as a writer and journalist, the Society of Women Journalists and the Literary Club . This action resulted from...
Intertextuality and Influence Gladys Henrietta Schütze
As a child GHSimagined that a person, particularly a lady, would have to be something very unusual to produce real books.
Schütze, Gladys Henrietta. More Ha’pence Than Kicks. Jarrolds.
37-8
She was reassured by the ordinary appearance of Effie Adelaide Rowlands (pen-name...
Health Adrienne Rich
After her third delivery she decided to be sterilised, though she met with social disapproval even from nurses caring for her in hospital: Had yourself spayed, did you?
O’Mahoney, John. “Poet and Pioneer: Adrienne Rich”. The Guardian, pp. Review 20 - 3.
22
She later recalled her isolation during...
Friends, Associates Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
While in South Africa, the Pethick-Lawrences met many prominent political figures, including W. P. Schreiner , who had been Prime Minister of the Cape in 1898. Emmeline became a good friend of the well-known feminist...
Textual Production Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
EPL published at least eight suffragist pamphlets from 1907 to 1915. In one of these, A Call to Women (undated), published by the National Women's Social and Political Union , she quotes from a letter...
Family and Intimate relationships Tillie Olsen
Abe had named his new, post-Tillie baby after one of her literary heroes, Olive Schreiner . TO later tried to erase him from her life, expunging traces of him from the record and blacking out...
Friends, Associates E. Nesbit
Through her political interests she got to know George Bernard Shaw (with whom she had a brief affair but a succeeding steady friendship), Sidney Webb , Sydney Olivier , Annie Besant , Eleanor Marx ,...
Leisure and Society Henrietta Müller
Her participation was initially feared because Elizabeth Cobb considered her too radical: a manhater who was warped in her moral nature.
Bland, Lucy. Banishing the Beast: Sexuality and the Early Feminists. New Press.
13
Olive Schreiner , however, described her warmly, as a plucky, fearless, brave, true...
Leisure and Society Henrietta Müller
With her resignation, Müller declared to Olive Schreiner that the club was a piteous failure.
Bland, Lucy. Banishing the Beast: Sexuality and the Early Feminists. New Press.
43
She promised to start a similar group exclusively for women, but founded The Women's Penny Paper instead.
Walkowitz, Judith R. City of Dreadful Delight. University of Chicago Press.
160n89
Education L. M. Montgomery
When her savings ran out, she left university and by the next year she was teaching again in Belmont, P.E.I. Among the influential books she read in the next few years were Olive Schreiner 's...
Occupation George Meredith
GM worked as a journalist for the Ipswich Journal, the Pall Mall Gazette, and the Morning Post (where he was editor from 1867 to 1868). He served as literary critic for the Westminister...

Timeline

2 May 1857: A grand dome designed by Panizzi was opened...

Building item

2 May 1857

A grand dome designed by Panizzi was opened in what had been the central courtyard of the British Museum .

July 1889: Women's Suffrage: A Reply appeared in the...

Building item

July 1889

Women's Suffrage: A Reply appeared in the Fortnightly Review to counter Mary Augusta Ward 's Appeal Against Female Suffrage in the previous month's Nineteenth Century.

1895: Thomas Bird Mosher of Portland, Maine, began...

Writing climate item

1895

Thomas Bird Mosher of Portland, Maine, began publishing The Bibelot. A Reprint of Poetry & Prose for Book Lovers, a monthly series later collected as an annual volume, of exquisitely produced editions in tiny press-runs.

June 1908: The Women Writers' Suffrage League was established...

National or international item

June 1908

The Women Writers' Suffrage League was established by Cicely Hamilton and Bessie Hatton .

Texts

Schreiner, Olive. An English-South African’s View of the Situation: Words in Season. Hodder and Stoughton, 1899.
Schreiner, Olive. Dream Life and Real Life: A Little African Story. T. Fisher Unwin, 1893.
Schreiner, Olive. Dreams. T. Fisher Unwin, 1890.
Cronwright-Schreiner, S. C., and Olive Schreiner. “Foreword”. Thoughts on South Africa, Frederick A. Stokes, 1923, pp. 7-8.
Schreiner, Olive. From Man to Man; or Perhaps Only . . . T. Fisher Unwin, 1926.
Showalter, Elaine, and Olive Schreiner. “Introduction”. The Story of an African Farm, Bantam, 1993, p. vii - xxi.
Schreiner, Olive. “Preface”. The Letters of Olive Schreiner, 1876-1920, edited by S. C. Cronwright-Schreiner, Hyperion Press, 1976, p. v - viii.
Schreiner, Olive. “Preface”. Olive Schreiner Letters: Volume 1: 1871-1899, edited by Richard Rive, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. vii - ix.
Schreiner, Olive. The Letters of Olive Schreiner, 1876-1920. Editor Cronwright-Schreiner, S. C., T. Fisher Unwin, 1924.
Schreiner, Olive, and S. C. Cronwright-Schreiner. The Political Situation. T. Fisher Unwin, 1896.
Schreiner, Olive. The Story of an African Farm. Chapman and Hall, 1883.
Schreiner, Olive. The Story of an African Farm. Bantam, 1993.
Schreiner, Olive. Thoughts on South Africa. T. Fisher Unwin, 1923.
Schreiner, Olive. Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland. T. Fisher Unwin, 1897.
Schreiner, Olive. Undine. Harper and Brothers, 1928.
Schreiner, Olive. Woman and Labour. T. Fisher Unwin, 1911.