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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Schreiner's
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Working Papers -
Letters, Letterness & Epistolary Networks *CALL FOR PAPERS*
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archive) |
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Latest Project News!
Fully searchable
transcriptions of Schreiner's c4800 extant letters plus an editorial
apparatus around these are now accessible via www.oliveschreiner.org
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:
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
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Edinburgh
Seminar
on Migrant and Diaspora Narratives & Life Writings 26/03/10 |
12/12/09post
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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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