Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm

Jessica Somers (University of Southern California)
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Olive Schreiner’s

The Story of an African Farm

was widely read and speculated upon in England and the United States following its publication in 1883. The only novel Schreiner published during her lifetime, and her most widely read work,

The Story of an African Farm

is considered one of the earliest pieces of Anglophone feminist fiction. It was one of the first colonial novels to gain widespread popularity in England, and it remains a seminal work in the South African settler canon (Bristow, 1992, viii; McClintock, 1995, 259). Though its legacy has been complicated by questions surrounding the novel’s unusual form, debates between Schreiner’s literary contemporaries regarding her skill as a writer of fiction, and criticism that highlights its problematic racial politics, the work…

2460 words

Citation: Somers, Jessica. "The Story of an African Farm". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 May 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=9305, accessed 02 December 2024.]

9305 The Story of an African Farm 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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