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.
VL
was a passionate pacifist and anti-fascist. She contributed generously to any appeal made to advance international understanding, the cause of peace, or social progress.
Gunn, Peter. Vernon Lee: Violet Paget, 1856-1935. Oxford University Press.
199
She wrote anti-war articles for newspapers (Olive Schreiner
Publishing
Vernon Lee
VL
's political stance was seen as dangerously unpatriotic: only a few of her essays were published by the Labour Leader, Nation, and New Statesman. In letter to Havelock Ellis
in September...
Textual Features
Doris Lessing
This includes autobiographical, African, and critical essays (on the work of herself and others, notably an Afterword written for a 1968 edition of Olive Schreiner
's Story of an African Farm).
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...
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...
Reception
Amy Levy
A revival began with Melvyn New
's edition in 1993 of her Complete Novels and Selected Writings.
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press.
2
Although AL
's poetry is comparatively slighted in this edition, her work has been regularly included...
politics
Hannah Lynch
Barine lived as a New Woman in her independence and her intellectual productivity, but her style was self-consciously feminine, and she deplored the left-wing feminism of writers like Olive Schreiner
and George Egerton
, whom...
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/.
Friends, Associates
Constance Lytton
In South Africa CL
met and became a friend of the feminist writer Olive Schreiner
,
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Lytton, Constance. Prisons and Prisoners. Heinemann.
9
whom she warmly loved and admired for the rest of her life, though the friendship was conducted mainly by letter.
Lytton, Constance. Letters of Constance Lytton. Editor Elizabeth Edith, Countess of Balfour, Heinemann.
33
Residence
Constance Lytton
Only a few months before she died CL
, still partly paralysed, made another attempt at independent life, moving from her mother's house at Knebworth to a flat in Tavistock Square in Bloomsbury, central...
politics
Margaret Haig, Viscountess Rhondda
That autumn, against the wishes of both her father and her husband, she joined the WSPU
, organising a local branch at Newport, South Wales. She paid her one-shilling annual membership fee and pledged...
Intertextuality and Influence
Margaret Haig, Viscountess Rhondda
Margaret Haig Thomas (later MHVR
) was influenced by the political ideas of John Stuart Mill
's The Subjection of Women (1869), Cicely Hamilton
's Marriage as a Trade (1909), and Olive Schreiner
's Woman and Labour (1911).
Eoff, Shirley. Viscountess Rhondda: Equalitarian Feminist. Ohio State University Press.
