OLIVE SCHREINER.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 43, 24 October 1891, Page 510

OLIVE SCHREINER.

Olive Schreiner, the authoressof ‘The Story of an African Farm,* was the ninth in a family of twelve children. Her father was a German missionary, her mother the daughter of an English Presbyterian minister. Wheresheobtained her singularly unorthodox views it is hard to determine genealogically. She was born on a lonely mission station in South Africa, peopled entirely by blacks, and found in this somewhat dismal situation the material for her dismal book. She is a singular woman, and possessed of a strong determined character and an investigating mind which, it is said, has led her to dip deeply into nearly all the experiences possible to women. She spent many years of her life at this mission station, and was a grown girl before she ever saw a town. Deep in her heart has lain the determination to make London her home ever since she was four years old, when she began saving all her pennies in the hope of some day having a pound—a tremendous sum, which, at that age, she fully believed would defray her travelling expenses from South Africa to Great Britain. Although she outgrew this fond illusion, she continued to save her pennies, and she has lived in London for the last seven years. She constantly contributes to English periodicals, and her work is always characterised by a certain mysticism and an indefinable, but quite perceptible, element of gloom. Into the ‘ African Farm ’ she is said to have crowded the result of her varied experience, and this book, which was her first, is prophesied by those who know her well, to be, also, her last.