| Letter Reference | Olive Schreiner: Extracts of Letters to Cronwright-Schreiner MSC 26/2.16/333 |
| Archive | National Library of South Africa, Special Collections, Cape Town |
| Epistolary Type | Extract |
| Letter Date | 24 January 1907 |
| Address From | Hanover, Northern Cape |
| Address To | |
| Who To | S.C. (‘Cron’) Cronwright-Schreiner |
| Other Versions | |
Copyright transcription: © Olive Schreiner Letters Project. This transcription can be freely used as long as copyright is acknowledged and it is referenced using the following citation: ‘Olive Schreiner to S.C. (‘Cron’) Cronwright-Schreiner, 24 January 1907, NLSA Cape Town, Special Collections, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.
Legend
The Project is grateful to the National Library of South Africa (NLSA), Cape Town, for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner extract, which is part of its Special Collections. This extract was produced by Cronwright-Schreiner using original letters when he was preparing
The Life... (1924) and
The Letters of Olive Schreiner (1924). With a few exceptions, the original letters in his possession were then destroyed. However, when Olive Schreiner's originals can be compared, this shows his extracts to be severely shortened, and/or inaccurate in sometimes minor but sometimes major respects, while their frequent multiple dates (eg. 8-15 August) indicate that he often combined a number of original letters, among other bowdlerisations and intrusions as well as deletions. Consequently the status of the Cronwright-Schreiner Extracts, of which this is one, is that they are artefacts of his editorial practices, rather than being ‘Olive Schreiner letters’ as such. They are provided for the sake of completeness, because they give clues as to where Schreiner was resident at different points in time, and indicate some of her activities. However, they should be read and used with considerable caution for the reasons spelled out here. Cronwright-Schreiner has written the date onto this extract, with where it was sent from implied by its place in the sequence of extracts. The reference is to the weather.
1:
…A truly terrible day: what must it be at de Aar…
2:
3:
