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.
Rediscovery of FMM
was fostered by Sybil Oldfield
, who in 1984 published an extensive account of Mayor's life and works (which she narrated in parallel with those of Mayor's contemporary Mary Sheepshanks
). During...
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...
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...
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
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...
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
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...
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
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.
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...
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...
