Victorian Women Writers Project

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PREFACE

This book contains all of Olive Schreiner’s yet unprinted or uncollected imaginative writings, except at least one novel to appear later, which it is proposed to bring forward. They appear unaltered, except in a few minor respects like punctuation, as I found them among her papers.

The date and place of writing, affixed by herself, will be found in many of these writings. Regarding the others, I am able to add a few notes. “Who Knocks at the Door?” the latest in date, was published in Fortnightly Review in November 1917. “The Buddhist Priest’s Wife” was written at Matjesfontein in 1891 and the following year. “By the Banks of a Full River” probably refers to the “great rains” of 1873, in which year she travelled by coach from Kimberly to Cape Town, but it seems to have been written much later. “The Wax Doll” and “Master Towser,” obviously stories for children, were both written when she was a girl; the latter, no doubt revised, was printed in 1881 in the New College Magazine (in which also “Dream Life and Real Life” was first printed), her brother being at that time Head Master of New College, Eastbourne; “The Wax Doll” is the most carefully written and preserved of page: 6 all these manuscripts, but I cannot recall that she ever mentioned it.

I desire heartily to thank Mr. Havelock Ellis, my wife’s friend and my own, for his kind and valuable help in making this selection.