Olive Schreiner

Olive Schreiner was born on 24 March 1855 at the Wesleyan mission of Wittebergen, in the Cape Colony, the ninth of the twelve children of a missionary couple. She rejected her parents' faith while young, educated herself and worked as a governess on farms, then left in 1881 for England, where she frequented freethinking and socialist circles and became close to Havelock Ellis. Back in South Africa, she opposed the policy of Cecil Rhodes, defended the cause of the Boers during the war, and saw her essay on women's work become the bible of the women's movement. She died in Cape Town on 11 December 1920.

In the catalogue 1

• NovelThe Story of an African FarmOlive Schreiner · 1883LiteraturePublic domain