Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Olive Schreiner
-
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>”;. 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.
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
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Friends, Associates
Michael Field
They made a friend of George Meredith
some time before 1890 and visited him often.
Field, Michael, and William Rothenstein. Works and Days. Editors Moore, Thomas Sturge and D. C. Sturge Moore, J. Murray.
66
(When he sent them a signed copy of Modern Love, they were inspired to dance a Dionysic dance...
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...
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...