Olive Schreiner - by Jade Munslow Ong & Andrew Van Der Vlies

About the Book

Examines Olive Schreiner's writing, networks and legacies in new global, historical and contemporary contexts

Book Synopsis

This collection of essays considers the significance of South African-born writer, activist and thinker Olive Schreiner in international and multidisciplinary contexts in her time - and the ongoing relevance of her work to our own. A leading writer of New Woman Fiction at the fin de siècle, Schreiner influenced generations of readers, not to mention other writers. Taken together, these essays make the argument for a 'new' Schreiner Studies drawing on recent developments in scholarship on global and peripheral modernisms, activist networks and intersectionality, posthumanism, memory studies and intermediality. They position Schreiner's work and legacy as significant for understanding literary and social archives, race and gender performance, and the rise of literary modernism in the global Anglosphere.

Review Quotes

This is a landmark in Olive Schreiner studies and in South African cultural, social and intellectual history that establishes the global scale of Schreiner's influence and influences. Engaging contemporary scholarly conversations on print history, ecology, Black diaspora, modernism and political activism, the book illuminates the shifting complexity of Schreiner's thought.

--Laura Chrisman, University of Washington