Olive Schreiner
Olive Schreiner – Life, Career, and Famous Quotes
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Explore the life and legacy of Olive Schreiner (1855-1920) — South African novelist, feminist, social critic, and activist. Learn about her pioneering works, her political engagement, and illuminating quotes that continue to inspire.
Introduction
Olive Emilie Albertina Schreiner (24 March 1855 – 11 December 1920) stands as one of South Africa’s most influential writers and public intellectuals. The Story of an African Farm (published under the pseudonym “Ralph Iron” in 1883), is often regarded as the first great South African novel in English, and it addressed themes such as gender, religion, independence, and existential struggle.
Yet Schreiner was far more than a novelist: she was a feminist, pacifist, social critic, and champion of political rights for marginalized groups.
In the following sections, we will explore her early life, intellectual formation, literary career, activism, legacy, and some of her most illuminating quotes and lessons.
Early Life and Family
Olive Schreiner was born on 24 March 1855 in a remote mission station in the Eastern Cape, in what was then the Cape Colony. ninth of twelve children born to missionary parents: Gottlob Schreiner, a German Methodist missionary, and Rebecca Lyndall, an English missionary’s daughter.
Her given names—Olive Emilie Albertina—were in part a memorial to three older brothers (Oliver, Emile, Albert) who died before her birth.
Because she grew up in missionary posts and frontier stations, Schreiner had very little formal schooling. Her mother was her principal teacher, and Olive was largely self-educated, reading widely in philosophy, literature, theology, and science.
Her childhood was marked by hardship: financial instability, frequent moves, and loss (including the death of a young sister, Ellie).
From a young age, Olive was privately in tension with the religious strictness of her upbringing. She questioned orthodoxy and developed a spiritual outlook shaped by sympathy for nature, an ethical longing beyond dogma, and skepticism toward institutional religion.
Youth, Education & Intellectual Formation
Given her minimal formal schooling, Schreiner’s intellectual growth came through reading and engagement with ideas. She immersed herself in the works of Herbert Spencer, Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and other thinkers who challenged conventional religious and social frameworks.
In her early adulthood, she worked as a governess for various farm families, moving between posts in order to support herself and, intermittently, contribute to her family’s welfare.
Around 1881, she traveled to the UK with hopes of studying medicine or nursing. However, her chronic asthma and fragile health prevented her from completing medical training, and she turned instead toward writing as her vocation.
During her years in England and on the Continent, she also joined intellectual circles and freethinker groups, deepened friendships with radical thinkers, and cultivated a position as a writer and critic.
Literary Career & Major Works
Olive Schreiner’s literary production spans novels, essays, allegories, political pamphlets, and correspondence.
The Story of an African Farm (1883)
Her first and most celebrated novel, The Story of an African Farm, was published in 1883 under the pseudonym Ralph Iron. Lyndall, one of its central female characters, as a prototype of the “New Woman” in colonial context.
The novel achieved recognition in literary circles, helped introduce Schreiner into international intellectual networks, and remains a classic in South African literature.
Later Fiction & Posthumous Works
In addition to her signature novel, Schreiner worked intermittently on From Man to Man, or Perhaps Only—a novel she labored on for decades but never fully revised before her death.
Also, Undine was published posthumously in 1928, and Dreams, Dream Life and Real Life, Stories, Dreams and Allegories, and Thoughts on South Africa are among her other works.
Nonfiction, Political & Social Writings
Schreiner’s non-fiction is as significant as her fiction. Her essay and pamphlet work include:
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Woman and Labour (1911), one of her most sustained feminist and social critiques
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The Political Situation in Cape Colony (1895, co-written)
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Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland (1897), an allegorical critique of colonial expansion and the excesses of Cecil Rhodes’ enterprises
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Closer Union: a Letter on South African Union and the Principles of Government (1909)
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The Dawn of Civilisation (published near the end of her life, on war and human society)
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Thoughts on South Africa (posthumously, essays on race, politics, land)
Her political writings reveal her commitment to anti-imperialism, racial justice, women’s equality, and pacifism.
Activism, Political Engagement & Later Life
Schreiner was not merely a writer but also a committed thinker-activist who engaged deeply with the political dynamics of her time.
Return to South Africa & Local Engagement
After years abroad, Schreiner returned to South Africa around 1889.
She initially had some sympathy for Cecil Rhodes’s vision, but she soon turned critical, particularly over the “Strop Bill” (which would allow flogging of Black and Coloured servants), and she satirized colonial abuses in Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland.
Marriage & Personal Trials
In 1894, she married Samuel Cronwright, a progressive farmer and political ally.
She and her husband moved frequently for health reasons.
The Boer War & Peace Advocacy
During the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), Schreiner was a vocal opponent of war and British imperialism. William Philip Schreiner (who served at one point as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony) shared convictions against racial and colonial excesses.
She wrote The South African Question by an English South African (1899) to warn British audiences about the costs of colonial war.
Later in life, she aligned herself with the women’s suffrage movement in the Cape, becoming vice-president of the Cape branch of the Women’s Enfranchisement League in 1907. However, she distanced herself when some branches sought to exclude Black women from the vote.
Final Years and Death
As she aged, her health deteriorated. She traveled back to England late in life for medical care, but was trapped there by the outbreak of World War I, during which she intensified her engagement with pacifist networks, even corresponding with Mahatma Gandhi.
Her last major work was The Dawn of Civilisation. After the war, she returned to South Africa, where she died 11 December 1920 in Wynberg (Cape Town) in her sleep.
Initially, she was buried in Kimberley, but later, at her husband’s behest, her remains (along with those of her infant daughter and dog) were transferred to the top of Buffelshoek mountain near Cradock.
Legacy and Influence
Olive Schreiner’s legacy is multifaceted: literary, feminist, political, and symbolic.
Literary & Intellectual Legacy
Her novel The Story of an African Farm remains foundational in South African and colonial literature curricula. Her literary style—blending introspection, allegory, social critique, and existential questioning—has influenced subsequent generations of writers.
Her letters (numbering over 5,000) have been preserved in the Olive Schreiner Letters Online (OSLO) project—an indispensable archive for scholars of her thought, social networks, and the cultural history of late 19th / early 20th century South Africa.
Feminism, Social Critique & Activism
Schreiner is remembered as a pioneer feminist thinker in the African colonial context: her book Woman and Labour in particular blends philosophical argument, social criticism, and moral urgency in calling for women’s economic and social autonomy.
She challenged both colonial oppression and gender norms, arguing that true progress must attend to both race and gender. Because she resisted easy categorization—neither fully radical, nor conservative—her thought continues to resist simplification and remains relevant in global discourses on intersectionality.
Symbolic & Institutional Recognition
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The Olive Schreiner Prize (since 1964) honors emerging writers in South Africa, rotating among prose, drama, and poetry.
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In 2003, she was awarded posthumously the Order of Ikhamanga in Gold, one of South Africa’s national honors, recognizing her cultural and social contributions.
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Streets, schools, and public institutions in South Africa bear her name in commemoration.
Her life—marked by physical frailty, moral courage, intellectual independence, and intersectional commitments—continues to inspire scholars, feminists, and activists alike.
Personality, Style & Intellectual Traits
Olive Schreiner’s character and methods reflect many tensions and harmonies:
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Interiority and idealism: Her writing is suffused with reflective, philosophical depth, emotional complexity, and a spiritual sensibility.
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Social empathy: Though often writing from the vantage of a white settler, she strove (with limitations) to speak to and for oppressed peoples—Black, Coloured, Indigenous—arguing for justice beyond mere tokenism.
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Independent thinker: She resisted simple ideological labels (socialist, feminist, pacifist), believing in nuance and critical thought.
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Moral urgency: Her writing often carries a prophetic tenor—calling society toward greater justice, peace, and dignity.
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Literary hybridity: Between allegory, realism, introspection, essay, and polemic, Schreiner navigated genres to suit her moral and aesthetic aims.
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Vulnerability amid resolve: Her lifelong ill health, personal losses, pregnancies lost, and periods of isolation tempered her activism with poignancy.
Selected Quotes
Below are some notable quotes attributed to Olive Schreiner, illustrating her insight, moral intensity, and voice:
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
(A paraphrase / echo of feminist thought, often attributed in contexts discussing women’s independence.)
“I believe that blindness of character is more dangerous than blindness of the eye.”
“You can only change what you regard.”
“It is terrible how closely ignorance is allied to cocksureness.”
“Love is the only power capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”
“Delight in reason, the scenic wonders of nature, and the mysteries of things not yet known.”
“Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences.”
These remarks display her convictions about knowledge, moral awareness, openness, and the poetic necessity of life.
Lessons from Olive Schreiner
Olive Schreiner’s life and work offer enduring lessons for writers, thinkers, and ethical actors:
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Write from the margins
She turned her life on the colonial frontier, her theological struggles, and her personal vulnerabilities into powerful literature that speaks beyond her time. -
Let moral conscience guide craft
Her integration of intellectual critique with aesthetic form shows how writing can be both beautiful and ethically potent. -
Resist easy classification
Even when she held strong convictions, Schreiner refused to be boxed into a single label. Her thought models the value of nuance. -
Persist through adversity
Despite chronic illness, loss, and social resistance, she kept writing and advocating. -
Advocate intersectionally
She insisted that gender justice must attend to race, colonial power, class—and that no movement for change is truly just if it excludes others. -
Cultivate inner freedom
Her spiritual questioning and interior life suggest that external struggles must be matched by internal clarity and compassion.
Conclusion
Olive Schreiner’s life defies easy summary. Born into missionary poverty, she educated herself, became a novelist whose work resonated far beyond her homeland, and took on the great moral challenges of her era: colonialism, racism, sexual inequality, war, and religious dogma. Her writing and activism combined the personal and the political, the interior and the social, the aesthetic and the prophetic.
Her legacy endures not just in the name of a prize, or the history of South African letters—but in the ongoing challenge to write and act with both intelligence and empathy. Scholars, feminists, decolonial thinkers, and readers continue to return to her work because she prompts us to reckon with the limits of power, the costs of exclusion, and the possibility of a more just humanity.