Back in 1894, a British journalist issued a carrot to The Story of an African Farm, saying, “Who could have foreseen that the new and most distinctive note of the literature of the last decade would be sounded by a little chit of a girl reared in the solitude of the African bush?”
Over a century later – reprinted now in the original unabridged version – readers and reviewers are still moved to lavish praise on this distinctive text. Stephen Coan directs your attention to this intriguing narrative and shares some of the history of its writing and original publication.
So you thought you had read Olive Schreiner’s classic The Story of an African Farm. Think again. To mark the novel’s 125th anniversary Penguin have issued a revised complete edition which includes Schreiner’s preface to the second printing and, as an afterword, her husband Samuel Cronwright’s introduction to the 1924 edition.
Much of The Story of an African Farm was written while Schreiner was employed as a governess on the Eastern Cape farms which provided the inspiration for the setting of the novel, first published in 1883.
Issued in the Penguin Modern Classic imprint and edited by Stephen Gray, this edition follows the 1893 text that was complete and unabridged. Details omitted in later editions have been restored and whereas previous editions supplied glossaries for “Dutch and Colonial words” here they are allowed to be part of everyday 19th-century South African English.
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