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Letter ReferenceOlive Schreiner: Extracts of Letters to Cronwright-Schreiner MSC 26/2.16/344
ArchiveNational Library of South Africa, Special Collections, Cape Town
Epistolary TypeExtract
Letter Date After Start: 17 February 1907 ; Before End: 19 February 1907
Address FromHanover, Northern Cape
Address To
Who ToS.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, 17 February 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 and where it was sent from onto this extract, and that Olive Schreiner had just come in from seeing her friend Miss Viljoen.

1:  …My girl Lena is really splendid….
2: 
3:  8.30pm. My god, Cron, I nearly got my wish! & “was looking out of
4:  the window, when there came the most tremendous clap & flash I ever
5:  felt. The lightening seemed to fall a few yards from the house between
6:  this & the pump. I thought I was struck at first, I felt quite stiff
7:  down my left side. Ollie ca ran howling into the dining room & under
8:  the table. It wasn’t like a thunder peal, it was just one crack
9:  short & sharp on the top of your head…
10: 
11: 


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