‘Undoubtedly Love Letters’? Olive Schreiner’s Letters to Karl Pearson

Letters have sometimes been assumed to be a private form of life writing, and certainly many of the South African writer Olive Schreiner’s (1855–1920) letters have been read in this way. However, her letters trouble any simple, binary notions of public and private. This article offers a re-reading of Schreiner’s letters to the statistician and founder of the Men and Women’s Club, Karl Pearson (1857–1936). It argues that the dominant reading that has been made of these letters as ‘unrequited love letters’ needs rethinking, for when these letters are considered in their entirety and contextualised as part of Schreiner’s wider extant letters, and when the intertwining of their public and private aspects is recognised, it becomes clear that a considerably more complex interpretation of her letters is required, and that this has implications for reading letters more generally.

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1 History and the South African Writer

A Story of South Africa ◽

10.4159/harvard.9780674281462.c2 ◽

1991 ◽

pp. 1-22

Keyword(s):

South African ◽

The South ◽

African Writer

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J.M. Coetzee and Elizabeth Costello: Landscapes and Animals

Humanities ◽

10.3390/h9030074 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 9 (3) ◽

pp. 74

Author(s):

Lucilla Spini

Keyword(s):

South African ◽

The South ◽

African Writer

The South African writer John Maxwell Coetzee is well-known for references to animals in his fiction, also given the fact that he and one of his well-known characters, Elizabeth Costello, raise awareness of the cruelty enacted on animals. Many studies have been conducted on Coetzee’s animals, but less attention has been placed on the settings and landscapes in which the animals are situated. Hence, this study aims at understanding the role of the landscapes surrounding the animals via an ecocritical approach. The paper focuses on Coetzee’s fiction featuring Elizabeth Costello, namely, The Lives of Animals (1999), Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons (2003), Slow Man (2005), and Moral Tales (2017) by identifying the animals and by discussing the related settings and landscapes. The research concludes that, despite the presence of several animals, there are almost no references to animals in pristine habitats, that most of the animals are in anthropized settings, and that animals’ and humans’ suffering are hidden in a shared landscape. This understanding is discussed as an ecological message about the interlinkages between the human and nonhuman worlds and between animals’ and humans’ wellbeing, also referring to the animal/human interconnectedness within the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Notes towards a Vagabond Humanism

10.1093/oso/9780198725152.003.0006 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Peter D. McDonald

Keyword(s):

South African ◽

Complex Network ◽

The South ◽

African Writer ◽

The Impact ◽

The Way

Seen in the context of UNESCO’s long-running debates about the concept of humanism, this chapter considers the importance Tagore had for the South African writer Es’kia Mphahlele. It focuses on the way he influenced Mphahlele’s internationalism and his commitment to ‘Afrikan Humanism’ as a way of reconciling the particular and the universal. Following this lead, the chapter goes on to consider the impact the Bāul singers of Bengal had on Tagore’s own humanism and the bearing this complex network of inheritances and connections has on the way UNESCO understands interculturality.

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A Survey of African Material in the Libraries and Archives of Protestant Missionary Societies in England

History in Africa ◽

10.2307/3171522 ◽

1981 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

pp. 277-307 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Maidel Cason

Keyword(s):

South African ◽

The South ◽

Christian Missions ◽

Recent Developments ◽

History Of ◽

African Writer ◽

Unique Source ◽

Missionary Societies ◽

The Individual ◽

African Missions

The libraries and archives of mission societies provide rare, often unique, source material concerning the last two centuries of African history. The following survey of Protestant mission societies in England is based on a survey done in 1970. In 1978 letters were written to all societies listed in order to update the material. Replies were received from twenty-one. When no information was received in 1978 this has been indicated in the text. Bibliographical and reference material has also been updated. Included for each of the societies covered is a list of the areas where the society worked in Africa, the types of material held, the mission periodicals produced and notes about access.There are two guides available which cover some of the groups considered. Rosemary Keen's A Survey of the Archives of Selected Missionary Societies (1968) describes the archives of nineteen societies. It is very uneven in coverage and includes a number of inaccuracies. A Guide to Manuscripts and Documents in the British Isles Related to Africa compiled by Noel Matthews and M. Doreen Wainwright was published in 1971 based on a survey done in 1965. It covers eleven of the societies listed here and the extent of coverage is indicated in the individual sections.Early in this century a South African writer attempted to cover all of African missions south of the Sahara. Du Plessis' A History of Christian Missions in South Africa (1911) and his Evangelization of Pagan Africa (1929) are carefully done, detailed accounts from the South African viewpoint. In 1958 Gerdener continued the coverage of South African work with his Recent Developments in the South African Mission Field.

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Some problems of writing historiography in Southern Africa

Literator ◽

10.4102/lit.v10i2.826 ◽

1989 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 16-24 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

S. Gray

Keyword(s):

South African ◽

Southern Africa ◽

Literary Text ◽

Black English ◽

The South ◽

Structural Imbalance ◽

African Writer ◽

Literary System ◽

System Today

In this article, the author has come to the conclusion that the established literary definitions no longer serve to define the nature of the South African literary system, and that current literary criteria are no longer functional in determining the merit of a South African literary text. Not only do the traditional categories of Afrikaans, White English, and Black English texts have to be reconsidered, but the concept of the “true” South African writer has to be revaluated. Historiography, therefore, is not a science that demands rigid adherence to fixed categories or rules, but an art that needs to address the structural imbalance that plagues our literary system today.

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Re-Assembling the City in Ivan Vladislavić’s Novels

Romanian Journal of English Studies ◽

10.2478/rjes-2013-0021 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

pp. 229-234

Author(s):

Luiza Caraivan

Keyword(s):

South African ◽

South African City ◽

The Novel ◽

The South ◽

African City ◽

African Writer ◽

Ivan Vladislavic ◽

The City

Abstract The paper analyses the various aspects of the city as described by the South African writer Ivan Vladislavić in the novel Portrait with Keys. Hunters, gatherers and urban poachers are the inhabitants of the South African city bordering the veld, a city whose economic centre has been moved to the suburbs due to high rates of crime.

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