Books with author Schreiner Olive

In writing the first great South African novel, Olive Schreiner drew on childhood memories of life on the isolated African veld to fashion a powerful indictment of the rigid Boer and English social conventions of her day. This 1883 bestseller, published under the pseudonym Ralph Iron, was greeted by both praise and condemnation for its feminist views on women's status and on marriage, and for its unorthodox critique of dishonesty and hypocrisy in the doctrines and practices of "respectable" Christian church people.The tale begins with three childhood playmates growing up on a sheep farm: Waldo, son of the farm's kindly and pious German overseer; Em, the stolid but kind English stepdaughter of Tant' Sannie, the farm's Boer owner; and Lyndall, Em's spirited orphan cousin. As the story follows the friends to adulthood, basic conflicts are enacted both internally and externally. Em's ardent fiancé falls in love with the beautiful but troubled Lyndall, who flouts social pressure to marry. Waldo struggles with his boundless yearning for spiritual fulfillment and for the stimulation that knowledge brings, as well as his need for warm human companionship.Lyndall's fierce efforts to wrest from the world a life for herself, and the affects her insight and courage have on others, make a gripping tale. This eloquent portrayal of loves damaged by societal repression retains its power more than a century after its first publication. Today's readers will welcome this inexpensive edition of a literary landmark.

This is the second book by Schreiner, South African author and feminist, who is best remembered for her novel, ‘The Story of an African Farm.’ It contains eleven short stories based on Schreiner's dreams and life on a farm in South Africa. “It contains grand passages, and passages which indicate a struggling, aspiring, rising moral nature, capable of high conceptions and of true, deep insight.” -Independent “The book stands the only one of its kind. It is like seeing visions to read it; and no one can read it understandingly and not be inspired to fresh struggles to attain the true, the good, and the beautiful.” -Public Opinion “Anyone who has read ‘The Story of an African Farm’ will need no urging to read Olive Schreiner’s ‘Dreams.’ It is a collection of allegories of life, as vividly condensed as tales by Maupassant or Coppee, but each opening up a long vista to the imagination….Miss Schreiner has thought much and deeply of the mysteries of human life before she poured out her doubts and longings in the African story, and in these dreams we may see the kernel of some of her best work.” -San Francisco Chronicle "The most formidable interpretive intellect that South Africa has produced." -Moore Ritchie “The book is a treasure for a lifetime….Never was there depicted a more earnest sympathy with the life that has lost its hold on good, and wandered from its true course. The spiritual significance is as great as is the intellectual grasp. The human life, the life next beyond this human life, are both sources of inspiration from which she draws.” -Sunday Budget