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Letter ReferenceGFP/OS-AG/7
ArchiveGreene Family Papers
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter Date14 November 1901
Address FromHanover, Northern Cape
Address ToKenilworth, Cape Town, Western Cape
Who ToAlice Greene
Other Versions
PermissionsPlease read before using or citing this transcription
Legend
The Project is grateful to John Barham and the Greene Family for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter to Alice Greene, which is part of the family collections. The date of the letter is derived from the postmark on an attached envelope, opened and stamped by a censor, which also provides the address and the name of the addressee it was sent to. Schreiner was resident in Hanover from late 1900 to late 1907.
1Dear Friend
2
3I’m so glad to hear you are better. Write & tell me all you can in a
4letter about the meeting. How much there is I would say if we could
5meet. Letters are no use. Write & let me know your plans. If you are
6not coming up then it might ?be ?be will you drop a line to my sister
7in law Mrs W P Schreiner to that effect, so that she may send me the
8parcel I asked her to ask you to bring with you.
9
10I am sending you registered by this post an MS of mine. The revised
11copy is destroyed with all my other MS at Johannesburg. Please send it
12to my sister-in-law I want to ask my brother to put it in his safe as
13I don’t want it destroyed. I love it so much its the Prelude to my
14big novel. The revised copy was the thing I love best of all I have
15ever written: You can read it if you like but its only the first rough
16draft dashed down, then I wrote it out carefully. I have only the
17rough first draft of the novel left but I could write it out again
18from memory if I had time. ^I would like to live to do it.^
19
20Good bye
21Olive
22
Notation
The meeting Schreiner refers to is a peace meeting. She sent written addresses to some of the Volkskongres and women's and peace congresses and spoke at others, as follows: Graaff-Reinet Volkskongres, April 1900 (spoke); Cape Town women's meeting, June 1900 (spoke); Somerset East peace congress, October 1900 (a letter of address); Paarl, November 1900 peace congress (a letter of address); Worcester Volkskongres, December 1900 (spoke). Consequently her reference could concern the October 1900 Somerset East meeting or the Paarl November 1900 meeting. The manuscript referred to, the Prelude, opens Schreiner's novel From Man to Man.