Victorian Author Olympics: Olive Schreiner

Olive Schreiner

Birth: in South Africa on March 24th, 1855 as the 9th child of a German Methodist missionary

Death: December 11th, 1920 in South Africa of a heart attack









Works:

• *The Story of an African Farm (1883); published under the pseudonym Ralph Iron; South Africa's first important novel
• *Undine (1929); published posthumously
• *From Man to Man; or, Perhaps only (1929); published posthumously
• -Dream Life and Real Life (1893)
• -Stories Dreams and Allegories (1923)
• Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland (1897)
• Women and Labour (1911)
• 5500 Letters

*Novels dealing with the woman question and gender relations
-Short feminist fiction

Themes of her works:

• Sexual, racial and class oppression
• Male chivalry as oppressing women
• Against girl's finishing schools
• Gender roles are socially determined
• Gender and androgyny

Dickens connection:

• No formal education but read many of his early works
• Influenced by him

Facts:

• Raised strict Calvinist in the remote mission stations of the Cape Colony
• Family was financially unstable and left home at 15 to work as a governess and nurse for Afrikaner families
• Had a crisis of faith and was estranged from her parents
• Experienced sexual harassment and denigration at an early age which would haunt her the rest of her life
• Politically active
• 1884 she met the pre-Freudian sexologist Havelock Ellis; close friendship
• 1885 joined exclusive "Men and Women's Club" founded by Karl Pearson; discussed the future of gender, equality of the sexes and marriage reform
• 1894 married Samuel Cronwright (ostrich farmer, cattle breeder & freethinker); she wouldn't take his name so he became Cronwright-Scheiner
• Had a daughter who died at birth
• Her book Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland embarrased her brother who was the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony at the time
• 1913 headed to Italy for medical treatment but only made it to England; spend 6 year there visiting Havelock Ellis and his wife Edith
• While in England she wrote passionate antiwar pamphlets
• 1920 returned to South Africa
• Acquainted with leader of socialist movement but not certain she shared their views
• Friends included: Karl Marx's youngest daughter Eleanor; Edith Lees Ellis; Amy Levi; Edward Carpenter; Margaret Harkness; Bertrand Russell; Alys Pearsall Smith; Leslie Stephen; Arthur Symons; Thomas Fisher Unwin (her publisher)

Olive Schreiner's Letters
Olive Schreiner Bio