The Story of an African Farm (Hesperus Classics) - Softcover
Spanning the childhood and burgeoning adulthood of three young people, this stunning evocation of 19th-century South Africa is a coming-of-age classic and an early feminist and modernist novel Lyndall is a feisty young girl with an independent spirit who is frustrated by the limited options open to her as a girl in South African society. She is the polar opposite of her cheerful, chubby cousin Em, who aspires to get married and settle down. The third child in the trio is Lyndall's best friend, Waldo, a thoughtful little boy who questions everything about the world around him except his affection for Lyndall. The children's bucolic lives on the veld are disrupted by the arrival of Bonaparte Blenkins to the farm, a confidence trickster who is keen to seduce Em's stepmother in order to take over the farm. Only Lyndall has the self-confidence to stand up to Bonaparte's cruelty, but ultimately his actions will echo throughout their lives forever. As the children grow up, they fall in love, move away, move back, and ultimately find meaning in their lives, despite the tragedies they endure. An instant bestseller on its publication in 1883, this book was far ahead of its time in its portrayal of women in society, and it retains its power more than a century later. Tackling themes of religion, philosophy, unrequited love, and fate, it helped transform the shape and course of the late Victorian novel and is a classic of South African literature.
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Review:
"This excellent edition of The Story of an African Farm allows us to read the novel in its important social, political, and literary contexts. Along with its thorough overview of the novel's place in turn-of-the-century views on gender and race, the text's introduction contributes a long-overdue focus on Schreiner and Victorian political economy. Readers will value the extensive appendices, which allow us to see the novel not only as an innovative narrative but also as a key intervention in social, political, and religious debates that affected Britain and its empire. This edition is an important achievement."--Paula M. Krebs
From the Publisher:
"This excellent edition of The Story of an African Farm allows us to read the novel in its important social, political, and literary contexts. Along with its thorough overview of the novel's place in turn-of-the-century views on gender and race, the text's introduction contributes a long-overdue focus on Schreiner and Victorian political economy. Readers will value the extensive appendices, which allow us to see the novel not only as an innovative narrative but also as a key intervention in social, political, and religious debates that affected Britain and its empire. This edition is an important achievement." -- Paula M. Krebs, Wheaton College
"This excellent edition of The Story of an African Farm allows us to read the novel in its important social, political, and literary contexts. Along with its thorough overview of the novel's place in turn-of-the-century views on gender and race, the text's introduction contributes a long-overdue focus on Schreiner and Victorian political economy. Readers will value the extensive appendices, which allow us to see the novel not only as an innovative narrative but also as a key intervention in social, political, and religious debates that affected Britain and its empire. This edition is an important achievement." -- Paula M. Krebs, Wheaton College
The Broadview Editions series is an effort to represent the ever-changing canon of literature in English by bringing together texts long regarded as classics with valuable, lesser-known literature. Newly type-set and produced on high-quality paper in trade paperback format, the Broadview Editions series is a delight to handle as well as to read.
Each volume includes a full introduction, chronology, bibliography, and explanatory notes along with a variety of documents from the period, giving readers a rich sense of the world from which the work emerged.
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- PublisherHesperus Press Ltd
- Publication date2015
- ISBN 10 1843915707
- ISBN 13 9781843915706
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages352
- Rating
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