"Barrenness middle class women's lives" Read the full letter
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Letter ReferenceHRC/UNCAT/OS-142
ArchiveHarry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter Date2 February 1891
Address FromMatjesfontein, Western Cape
Address To
Who ToHavelock Ellis
Other VersionsCronwright-Schreiner 1924: 202; Draznin 1992: 473
PermissionsPlease read before using or citing this transcription
Legend
The Project is grateful to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin, for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Manuscript Collections. This letter has been dated by reference to information written onto it by Ellis. Schreiner was resident in Matjesfontein from mid April 1890 to mid March 1891, with occasional short visits elsewhere.
1My Havelock
2
3I’ve just been reading an article of Edith Lees on Science, very
4good. I should think hers was a fine sympathetic, truthful nature.
5
6How do you like Fort? Doesn’t Louie like him??
7
8I enclose names of ^places^ to be put at end of allegories
9
10I am working still at the South African article. It is almost a book.
11I am trying to trim it down to the limits of an article. Do you think
12the Nineteenth would give me forty pages? Its a fine article, & will
13be of intense interest describing our problem & leading men Rhodes &c
14
15^Whoever you give the article to make them promise that they or rather
16let them understand that I retain the right of republishing the
17article in book form after two full months from its publication have
18passed.^
19
Notation
Neither before marriage nor after it under the name of Mrs Havelock Ellis did Edith Lees publish a book on science; an essay or similar publication has not been traced. The 'names of places' Schreiner refers to are those attached to the allegories in Dreams. The South African essay being 'trimmed down' was in the event not published in the Nineteenth Century. See: The article referred to is the first of Schreiner’s ‘A Returned South African’ essays: "Stray Thoughts on South Africa" Fortnightly Review July 1891, vol 50, pp.53-74. Draznin's (1992) version of this letter is in some respects different from our transcription. Cronwright-Schreiner's (1924) extract includes material from a different letter and is also incorrect in other ways.