Olive Schreiner’s Followers (88)

Olive Schreiner

Born

in Wittebergen, Eastern Cape, South Africa

March 24, 1855

Died

December 11, 1920

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Olive Schreiner (24 March 1855 - December 11, 1920), was a South African author, pacifist and political activist. She is best known for her novel The Story of an African Farm, which has been acclaimed for the manner it tackled the issues of its day, ranging from agnosticism to the treatment of women.

From Wikipedia:
Olive Emilie Albertina Schreiner (1855-1920) was named after her three older brothers, Oliver (1848-1854), Albert (1843-1843) and Emile (1852-1852), who died before she was born. She was the ninth of twelve children born to a missionary couple, Gottlob Schreiner and Rebecca Lyndall at the Wesleyan Missionary Society station at Wittebergen in the Eastern Cape, near Herschel in South Africa. Her childhood was a harsh one: her father Olive Schreiner (24 March 1855 - December 11, 1920), was a South African author, pacifist and political activist. She is best known for her novel The Story of an African Farm, which has been acclaimed for the manner it tackled the issues of its day, ranging from agnosticism to the treatment of women.

From Wikipedia:
Olive Emilie Albertina Schreiner (1855-1920) was named after her three older brothers, Oliver (1848-1854), Albert (1843-1843) and Emile (1852-1852), who died before she was born. She was the ninth of twelve children born to a missionary couple, Gottlob Schreiner and Rebecca Lyndall at the Wesleyan Missionary Society station at Wittebergen in the Eastern Cape, near Herschel in South Africa. Her childhood was a harsh one: her father was loving and gentle, though unpractical; but her mother Rebecca was intent on teaching her children the same restraint and self-discipline that had been a part of her upbringing. Olive received virtually all her initial education from her mother who was well-read and gifted.[clarification needed] Her eldest brother Fred (1840-1901) was educated in England and became headmaster of a school in Eastbourne.

When Olive was six, Gottlob transferred to Healdtown in the Eastern Cape to run the Wesleyan training institute there. As with so many of his other projects, he simply was not up to the task and was expelled in disgrace for trading against missionary regulations. He was forced to make his own living for the first time in his life, and tried a business venture. Again, he failed and was insolvent within a year. The family lived in abject poverty as a result.

However, Olive was not to remain with her parents for long. When her older brother Theophilus (1844-1920) was appointed headmaster in Cradock in 1867, she went to live with him along with two of her siblings. She also attended his school and received a formal education for the first time. Despite that, she was no happier in Cradock than she had been in Wittebergen or Healdtown. Her siblings were very religious, but Olive had already rejected the Christianity of her parents as baseless and it was the cause of many arguments with her family.

Therefore, when Theo and her brother left Cradock for the diamond fields of Griqualand West, Olive chose to become a governess . On the way to her first post at Barkly East, she met Willie Bertram, who shared her views of religion and who lent her a copy of Herbert Spencer’s First Principles. This text was to have a profound impact on her. While rejecting religious creeds and doctrine, Spencer also argued for a belief in an Absolute that lay beyond the scope of human knowledge and conception. This belief was founded in the unity of nature and a teleological universe, both of which Olive was to appropriate for herself in her attempts to create a morality free of organized religion.
After this meeting, Olive travelled from place to place, accepting posts as a governess with various families and leaving them because of the sexual predation of her male employers in many cases. During this time she met Julius Gau, to whom she became engaged under doubtful circumstances. For whatever reason, their engagement did not last long and she returned to live with her parents and then with her brothers. She read widely and began writing seriously. She started Undine at this time.
However, her brothers’ financial situation soon deteriorated, as diamonds became increasingly difficult to find. Olive had no choice but to resume her transient lifestyle, moving between various households and towns, until she returned briefly to her parents in 1874. It was there that she had the first of the asthma attacks that would plague her for the rest of her life. Since her parents were no more financially secure than before and because of her ill-health, Olive was forced to resume working in order to support them.
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Olive Schreiner’s books

Average rating: 3.58 · 4,413 ratings · 535 reviews · 189 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Story of an African Farm 3.52 avg rating — 3,103 ratings — published 1883 — 324 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Dreams 3.95 avg rating — 306 ratings — published 1890 — 161 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland 3.45 avg rating — 71 ratings — published 1897	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	La rosa di una donna by Olive Schreiner, Enrico De Luca (Translator) 3.66 avg rating — 53 ratings — published 1893	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Woman and Labour 3.38 avg rating — 56 ratings — published 1911 — 213 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Three Dreams in a Desert 3.44 avg rating — 48 ratings — published 1887 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Dream Life and Real Life; A Little African Story 3.45 avg rating — 40 ratings — published 1893	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Buddhist Priest's Wife 3.56 avg rating — 27 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	In a Far-Off World 2.43 avg rating — 28 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Undine by Olive Schreiner, C. S. Cronwright-Schreiner (Introduction) 3.92 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 1928 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Olive Schreiner…

Quotes by Olive Schreiner (?)

“The woman wanderer goes forth to seek the Land of Freedom.

“How am I to get there?” Reason answers: “here is one way, and one only. Down the banks of Labour, through the water of suffering. There is no other.”

The woman cries out: “For what do I go to this far land which no one has ever reached? Oh, I am alone! I am utterly alone!”

But soon she hears the sounds of feet, ‘a thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, and they beat this way!’

“They are the feet of those who shall follow you. Lead on.”
― Olive Schreiner

53 likes

“I would like to say to the men and women of the generations which will come after us: you will look back at us with astonishment. You will wonder at passionate struggles that accomplished so little, at the, to you, obvious paths to attain our ends which we did not take. At the intolerable evils before which it will seem to you we sat down passive. At the great truths staring us in the face which we failed to see, at the great truths we grasped at but could not get our fingers quite 'round. You will marvel at the labour that ended in so little. But what you will never know that it was how we were thinking of you and for you that we struggled as we did and accomplished the little that we have done. That it was in the thought of your larger realization and fuller life that we have found consolation for the futilities of our own. All I aspire to be and was not, comforts me.”
― Olive Schreiner, Woman and Labor

tags: activism, children, future, generations, legacy

25 likes

“We have been so blinded by thinking and feeling that we have never seen the World.”
― Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm

18 likes

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Polls

June 2016 Old School Classic Poll

1880, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 776 pages

47 votes, 24.0%

5th century BC, The Art of War by Sun Tzu, 273 pages

37 votes, 18.9%

1794, The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, 654 pages

33 votes, 16.8%

1837, The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, 801 pages

20 votes, 10.2%

1830, The Red and the Black by Stendhal, 608 pages

19 votes, 9.7%

1867, In Search of the Castaways; or the Children of Captain Grant by Jules Verne, 432 pages

10 votes, 5.1%

1885, Germinal by Émile Zola, 592 pages

10 votes, 5.1%

1883, The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner, 304 pages

9 votes, 4.6%

440 BC, The Histories by Herodotus, 716 pages

7 votes, 3.6%

1749, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding, 1024 pages

4 votes, 2.0%

196 total votes

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