Olive Schreiner, Woman and Labour

Carolyn Burdett (Birkbeck, University of London)
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From the 1880s, when she lived in London and attended some of the most influential political groups of the time (such as the Men and Women’s Club and the Fellowship of the New Life), Schreiner planned to write an account of women’s part in the history of civilization. Her only book-length work on the topic,

Woman and Labour

, did not appear, however, until 1911. Its early chapters draw closely from an article published in 1899 (in the New York

Cosmopolitan

), and Schreiner explains in the introduction that the whole book was only a remembered ‘fragment’ of a much longer work that had been destroyed when her Johannesburg home was looted during the Anglo-Boer war of 1899-1902. Whatever Schreiner’s own sense of the book’s interrupted genesis, however, it proved a central text for…

1157 words

Citation: Burdett, Carolyn. "Woman and Labour". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 December 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=9348, accessed 28 March 2024.]

9348 Woman and Labour 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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