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
death Constance Lytton
CL died at the bed-sittingroom she had just moved into in London (once the lodging of Olive Schreiner ) at the early age of fifty-three.
Lytton, Constance. Letters of Constance Lytton. Editor Elizabeth Edith, Countess of Balfour, Heinemann.
264
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Education Katharine Bruce Glasier
While enrolled at Newnham, Conway was inspired—both by her teacher Helen Gladstone (daughter of the prime minister) and visiting speaker Olive Schreiner —to adopt strong, militantly feminist views. Schreiner, she later wrote, encouraged every bit...
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...
Education Doris Lessing
Before attending school and after she left, Doris educated herself by reading. Her parents possessed copies of the classics, like Scott , Dickens , and Kipling . She read widely in the nineteenth century—her favourites...
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...
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 Katharine Bruce Glasier
Her involvement in socialist circles led her to acquaintance with Sidney and Beatrice Webb , Edward Hulton (editor of the Sunday Chronicle), and Robert Blatchford , for whom she wrote several articles.
Thompson, Laurence. The Enthusiasts. Victor Gollancz Limited.
71
With...
Friends, Associates Margaret Harkness
Probably through sisters Kate Potter Courtney (whose house Harkness often stayed at) and Beatrice Potter (later Webb) , MH began to associate with the intellectuals who frequented the Reading Room of the British Museum ...
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 ,...
Friends, Associates Mathilde Blind
One of her travelling companions (and a close friend) was the New Woman novelist Mona Caird (famous for her declaration calling the institution of marriage a vexatious failure in the Westminster Review in 1888).
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 199. Gale Research.
38
Friends, Associates Emma Frances Brooke
EFB met Olive Schreiner either through the Fellowship of the New Life or the Men and Women's Club , where both were associates. Schreiner read but remained noncommittal about EFB 's unpublished paper, The Woman...
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...
Friends, Associates Mona Caird
She met Arthur Symons in June 1889, and in the following month Thomas Hardy carefully arranged to sit between her and Rosamund Marriott Watson (and opposite F. Mabel Robinson ) at a dinner of the...
Friends, Associates Amy Levy
They included Olive Schreiner , the future Beatrice Webb , Dollie Maitland Radford , Margaret Harkness , Clementina Black (whose sister Constance had been a school friend of AL ), and Eleanor Marx . Through...
Friends, Associates Amy Levy
She saw a good deal of Olive Schreiner , who called her the most interesting girl she had met in England,
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press.
179
and also took her on two trips outside London at the very end...

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.