Olive Schreiner, Woman and Labour

Carolyn Burdett (Birkbeck, University of London)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.07: English Writing and Culture of the Victorian Period, 1837-1901.
Vol. editors: Gillian Fenwick (University of Toronto), Jessica Gossling (Goldsmiths College, University of London)

Domains

Political Science
Women's Studies

Dates

First circulation or publication 1911

Places

South Africa (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Essays/ Lectures (any)

Resources

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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…

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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 22 November 2024.]