The
Olive Schreiner Letters Project
To
quote from this page, please reference it as 'Olive Schreiner Letters
Project - Home Page' www.oliveschreinerletters.ed.ac.uk/index.html and
the paragraph number.
1.1 The
Olive Schreiner Letters Project is funded by the ESRC. It will
transcribe,
analyse and publish the complete extant Olive Schreiner letters
presently in
archival locations world-wide. Through this, it will also contribute
theoretically and methodologically to
the use of letters and other epistolary
materials in social science and humanities research.
1.2 The
feminist and socialist writer and social theorist Olive Schreiner
(1855-1920)
was one of the most important – and radical
social
commentators
of her day. Her published writings
include
novels (The
Story
of An African Farm, Undine, From Man to
Man), allegories (Dreams,
Dream Life
and Real Life, Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland),
social theory (The Political
Situation, Closer Union, Woman and
Labour).
1.3 Around 4800
Schreiner letters
are extant, with
most never having been
previously published or discussed. They are an unparalleled source for
exploring the unfolding thinking of one of the great feminist theorists
and key
New Woman writers. They are also a rich resource around which to
formulate
methodological and theoretical means of analysing a large-scale
epistolary
dataset.
1.4 Schreiner’s
developing analysis and social theorising in her letters includes such
topics as colonialism
under transition, metropolitan
feminism and socialism, prostitution and its analysis, changing
understandings
of ‘race’ and capital, imperialism 'on the ground'
in
southern Africa, the
South African War and its concentration camps and women’s
relief
organisations,
international perspectives on women's franchise campaigns, labour
issues,
international feminist networks, pacifism and war economies, and
political and
economic changes in South Africa post WW1.
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Home
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Schreiner's
Letters - Project
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Team
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Consultant
& Advisory
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Team
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OS Publications
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Working Papers -
Letters, Letterness & Epistolary Networks
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| ANNOUNCEMENTS |
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**May
2013 UPDATE**
STOP PRESS!!
We are very pleased to announce that a new edited collection, on Documents of Life
Revisited, has been published, with several chapters
drawing on work by the Schreiner Letters Project and the Olive Schreiner Letters Online.
Please visit: http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409442899
for more information.
Taking off from Ken Plummer’s work in the original Documents of Life, the contents
explore a range of different kinds of life documents and delineate a
critical humanist methodology for researching and writing about these -
letters, memoirs, ethnographic fieldnotes, photographs, interviews and
online sources all feature. Edited by Liz Stanley, University of
Edinburgh, there are 14 chapters which provide research-based
discussions of exciting new ways of thinking about and analysing
documents of life. A flyer including a Table of Contents and 20%
off the book’s price is available here, while the
Ashgate website also features a price reduction for web orders.
‘Documents
of life have been acknowledged as
major research resources for a century and more. But they do not always
receive the critical attention they deserve. As Liz Stanley and her
authors demonstrate here, we need to revisit the humanist tradition
that treats lives, narratives and biographies as prime topics of
analysis and as sources of insight in the social sciences.’
Paul Atkinson, Cardiff University, UK
‘“Truth
is beauty”, Ken Plummer writes in his contribution to this
critical volume of essays that
respond to his pathbreaking work Documents of Life. This is indeed a
beautiful book, wherein truth
unfolds through different stories, artfully brought together by Liz
Stanley. A book about the
thick autonomy and the unbearable lightness of stories entangled in the
web of human
relations.’
Maria Tamboukou, University of East London, UK
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News from the
Whites Writing Whiteness project:
April 2013: A Powerpoint
Presentation about the project's methodological beginnings is now
available: Researching
social change
& whiteness in South Africa
1770s-1970s, with commentary by Liz Stanley
Futher information about Liz
Stanley's three-year ESRC Professorial
Research Fellowship, which is concerned with researching ‘Whites
Writing Whiteness:
Letters, Domestic Figurations and Representations of Whiteness in South
Africa 1770s-1970s’, is available at:
Team members aim to blog
regularly about project-related activities and provide reflections on
various aspects of the WWW project. See our latest blog posts here: WWW Blog
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Schreiner Letters Go Live!
January 2012
Fully searchable
transcriptions of Schreiner's c4800 extant letters plus an editorial
apparatus around these are now accessible via www.oliveschreiner.org
March
2013 UPDATE
Website
Usage
Statistics Available!
Would you like to know how the Olive Schreiner
Letters Project website and the Olive
Schreiner Letters Online website have been used since they were
launched? Google Analytics Data Reports are now available via the links
below:
- OSLP
website report (Dec 2008 –
Mar 2013)
- OSLO
website report (Jan 2012 – Mar
2013)
June
2012
UPDATE
Two features of the Olive Schreiner
Letters Online are now available - find
out more here!
April
2012
UPDATE
Would
you like to know more about
Olive Schreiner Letters Online?
A slide show
about producing the website & ideas for
potential research using the letters can now be accessed here.
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How
to
join the Mailing
List:
Would you like to hear more about
'lives and events' from across the globe? Please subscribe to
our **Lives
& Letters
mailing list** by emailing oliveschreiner@yahoo.co.uk.
Alternatively, you can self-subscribe to the mailing list by sending a
blank email to sympa@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk
with
the following in the subject: sub lives-and-letters
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Schreiner News from...
Woman and Labour: Centenary
Special
Please click the link
above to access
a set of letters around the publication of
Schreiner’s influential Woman
and Labour (1911).
News from
the 1870s: Schreiner working as a governess on Boer
farms, writing to a family member and a possible friend
November 1880:
An epiphany - England on the Horizon & the death of Hamilton Hope
October 1911: Schreiner on
women’s suffrage and Aletta
Jacob’s visit
September 1911: Schreiner on
women's suffrage
August 1911: Schreiner on
Will
Schreiner not speaking at the
Races
Congress & on ‘the dreadful suffragette Con
seen at close quarters’
July 1911: Schreiner on
Will
Schreiner & the Races Congress
June
1911:
Schreiner on the ‘black peril’ investigations
May
1911: Schreiner
on the South African Women's Enfranchisement League & 'race'
April
1911:
Schreiner on
'oligarchic white men'
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Recent Project News:
May 2013:
March 2013:
February 2013:
June
2012:
March 2012:
Dec 2011:
Dec 2011:
Sept 2011:
We have
posted a set of letters around the publication of
Schreiner’s influential Woman
and Labour (1911) to commemorate its Centenary. Woman and
Labour
was described by Vera Brittain as the ‘bible of the women’s
movement’ and it remained a key feminist text through to the
1960s. In it, Schreiner’s analysis of value and social labour
anticipated recent feminist rethinking, with her letters providing
remarkable insight into the completion, publication and reception of
the book. There are many more such comments in the complete letters,
which can be accessed when the Olive
Schreiner Letters Online goes live
in January 2012.
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Project News Archive: |
July2011post–
Advance
information
about the 'Lives
& Letters' Mailing
List. |
June2011post–
Liz
Stanley is
giving the keynote address at the 'Gender and the politics of
auto/biographical memory: new directions' conference,
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Program L'homme congress, 10 June 2011.
The title of her address is 'Against
biographical closure: Olive Schreiner, A Returned South African, her
letters, her essays, her fiction, her politics, her life'. |
May2011post–
A NEW Working
Paper on different aspects of the research being carried out by
Olive Schreiner Letters Project members has just been published. Access it
here! |
April2011post–
CONFERENCE PAPERS ON ASPECTS OF
SCHREINER'S LETTERS!
Two papers, dealing with different
aspects of Olive Schreiner's letters and life, are to be given at the
NABS one-day conference on 'The
Documents of Life Revisited', to be
held at the University of Edinburgh on Friday 20 May, by Helen Dampier
and
Andrea Salter. Abstracts available!
The Documents of Life
Revisited!
NABS Seminar, Edinburgh,
20 May 2011 Programme
and Abstracts available here! |
15/02/11post –
Helen
Dampier & Liz Stanley have been invited to participate in
the international workshop on ‘Gender Histories Across Epistemologies’
organised by Mary Jo Maynes and Donna Gabaccia at the University of
Minnesota,
Minneapolis, in mid April. Their paper is entitled ‘I just
express my
views & leave them to work’: Using Olive Schreiner’s
letters to re-think
the historiography of Cape politics 1899-1910’. A draft
version
will be posted
on the OSLP website with comment invited, nearer the date of the
Workshop. |
08/09/10post
–
The
Letters of Alice Greene, teacher, critic of the South
African War, & letter-writer extraordinary (1858-1920) Two books
of interest to historians and sociologists (ed. John Barham)
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21/07/10post
–
Olive Schreiner
Letters Project
download
publications! |
28/04/10post
–
NABS/SCDS: Exploring Immigrant Personal
Correspondence Workshop 14/05/10 |
26/01/10post
–
Edinburgh
Seminar
on Migrant and Diaspora Narratives & Life Writings 26/03/10 |
12/12/09post
–
Working
Papers Launch |
01/11/09post
–
Mellon
Fellowship for
Project PI |
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Olive Schreiner Letters Project
School of
Social & Political Science
Chrystal
Macmillan Building
15a George
Square
University
of Edinburgh
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