Olive Schreiner and the Progress of Feminism

"South African-born Olive Schreiner became famous in 1880s England following the publication of her novel The Story of an African Farm. She gained a reputation as the first of the 'New Women' who were to demand that women be allowed a full part in the progress which seemed to characterize modern European nations. But however warmly the metropolitan culture embraced Schreiner's trenchant analyses of women's oppression, she remained a distinctively colonial writer. During the last decade of the nineteenth century, Schreiner was one of the most outspoken critics of the British empire in South Africa, supporting the Boers in the 1899-1902 war, and then the African cause as it became clear that South African Union had resulted in the assertion of white supremacy. Through detailed readings of her fictional and non-fictional work, Olive Schreiner and the Progress of Feminism examines how Schreiner's opposition to imperialism in South Africa shaped her response to European modernity and women's relation to 'progress'."--Jacket.