"On helping set up women's branch of Democratic Foundation 1880s London" Read the full letter
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Letter ReferenceKarl Pearson 840/4/1/106-107
ArchiveUniversity College London Library, Special Collections, UCL, London
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter DateSeptember 1885
Address From16 Portsea Place, Westminster, London
Address To
Who ToKarl Pearson
Other Versions
PermissionsPlease read before using or citing this transcription
Legend
The Project is grateful to University College London (UCL) and its Library Services for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Special Collections. The month and year have been written on this letter in an unknown hand. Schreiner was resident in Portsea Place from early August to late October 1885.
1 My dear Mr Pearson
2
3 Thank you for the pamphlets. The Ethic of Freethought I like best of
4all your writings that I have seen. Ellis tells me it is out of print;
5have you perhaps another copy that you might spare me? I want to send
6it to some one at the Cape. I return the Martin Luther paper. I do not
7like it very much. I sympathize strongly with the main idea. But you
8sometimes make assertions in it which it does not seem to me you
9yourself would ^quite^ be prepared to defend
. You seem to wish more to
10prove your point than to get at the truth, & that is a quality I
11don’t see in anything else of yours. It interested me very much
12though ^& in style is splendid.^ I have taken the liberty of lending the
13Rights of Women it to a friend who wanted to see it very much. I hope
14you won’t mind.
15
16^I will read it & return it as soon as she sends it back. I have
17written my paper but it is about ? times the length it must be & shall
18have to condense it still. ^
19
20 Yours very sincerely
21 Olive Schreiner
22
23 ^I was very glad to hear that you were working at mathematics. I was
24afraid there was no one thing on which you were concentrating yourself.^
25
26 ^The great danger some of us have to fight against is too much
27splitting up of ourselves.^
28
29
30
Notation
The references to Pearson's publications are: (1883) The Ethic of Freethought. A Lecture (London: E. W. Allen) later republished in his (1888) The Ethic of Freethought: A Selection of Essays and Lectures London: T. Fisher Unwin; (1884) 'Martin Luther: his Influence on the Material and Intellectual Welfare of Germany', also later republished in his The Ethic of Freethought. The 'Rights of Women' is Mary Wollstonecraft (1792) A Vindication of the Rights of Woman London: J. Johnson.