Olive Schreiner

Olive Schreiner (1855-1920), South African novelist and political activist most famous for her book The Story of an African Farm (1883). Schreiner was a pioneer in her treatment of women in her fiction and made many perceptive observations on the political future of South Africa, particularly the situation of blacks under apartheid.

Born Olive Emilie Albertina Schreiner in Wittebergen, South Africa (then Cape Colony), she had no formal education but was taught at home by her mother. She began writing two of her novels while supporting herself as a governess from 1874 to 1881, after which she went to England, hoping to study. The Story of an African Farm was published under the pseudonym Ralph Iron while Schreiner was in England. The story of a young girl growing up on a farm in the grasslands of southern Africa, trying to attain her independence in the face of a rigid, repressive society, the book met with immediate success. In England Schreiner came to be accepted by literary and political circles and became a supporter of women's rights. She was a friend of Cecil Rhodes, a British statesman and major proponent for British rule in southern Africa, but parted company with him for political reasons. Schreiner caused controversy in relation to Rhodes's activities with her book Trooper Halkett of Mashonaland (1897), which criticized the way Rhodesia (which became Zimbabwe in 1980) was colonized. She returned to South Africa in 1899 and worked on behalf of the Boers, a local, white Afrikaner group that refused to live under British rule, during the Boer War (1899-1902). Schreiner also met and married a politician, Samuel Cronwright—he changed his name to Cronwright-Schreiner—and they both worked for a variety of political causes. In 1911 she wrote Women and Labour, a feminist novel criticizing the relations between men and women. Schreiner spent her last years in England, separated from her husband, but returned to South Africa in 1920 shortly before she died. Her other novels, both with feminist themes, are From Man to Man (1927) and Undine (1929). They were published posthumously.