Olive Schreiner – författare

"I've lived in so many countries, yet when anything comes to me, it's nearly always Africa—Africa that sets it."Olive Schreiner's From Man to Man or Perhaps Only—, unfinished at the time of her death and posthumously published in 1926, tells the story of two white women born into the racist, society of mid-nineteenth-century South Africa. One sister remains in the British Cape Colony and finds a way to deal with her husband's infidelities. The other raped at age 15, is hounded out of her insular white South African community, and becomes a kept woman in London's East End. Addressing the ill-effects of a male-dominated imperial capitalism, and positing an equivalence between marriage and prostitution in a society where women's function is primarily sexual, the novel foregrounds the perspective of a young black girl in order to place before its readers the vision of what Schreiner called an "expanded and enlarged humanity".Edited by Dorothy Driver, and based partly on manuscript amendments by Schreiner, reproduces two alternative endings, one apparently told to her husband-editor, and summarised by him, and the other she wrote in a letter to a friend. Driver also provides literary, historical, and linguistic context through an in-depth introduction and expansive notes. This edition includes extracts from Schreiner's letters and journals that cast light on the genesis, composition, and final abandonment of the novel.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around theglobe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of othervaluable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies forfurther study, and much more.

Lyndall, Schreiner's articulate young feminist, marks the entry of the controversial New Woman into nineteenth-century fiction. Raised as an orphan amid a makeshift family, she witnesses an intolerable world of colonial exploitation. Desiring a formal education, she leaves the isolated farm for boarding school in her early teens, only to return four years later from an unhappy relationship. Unable to meet the demands of her mysterious lover, Lyndall retires to a house in Bloemfontein, where, delirious with exhaustion, she is unknowingly tended by an English farmer disguised as her female nurse. This is the devoted Gregory Rose, Schreiner's daring embodiment of the sensitive New Man. A cause célèbre when it appeared in London, The Story of an African Farm transformed the shape and course of the late-Victorian novel. From the haunting plains of South Africa's high Karoo, Schreiner boldly addresses her society's greatest fears - the loss of faith, the dissolution of marriage, and women's social and political independence. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.