The Story of an African Farm (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Schreiner, Olive

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0192836641 ISBN 13: 9780192836649

Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks, 1998

Synopsis

Lyndall, Schreiner's articulate young feminist, marks the entry of the controversial New Woman into nineteenth-century fiction. Raised as an orphan amid a makeshift family, she witnesses an intolerable world of colonial exploitation. Desiring a formal education, she leaves the isolated farm for boarding school in her early teens, only to return four years later from an unhappy relationship. Unable to meet the demands of her mysterious lover, Lyndall retires to a house in Bloemfontein, where, delirious with exhaustion, she is unknowingly tended by an English farmer disguised as her female nurse. This is the devoted Gregory Rose, Schreiner's daring embodiment of the sensitive New Man. A cause célèbre when it appeared in London, The Story of an African Farm transformed the shape and course of the late-Victorian novel. From the haunting plains of South Africa's high Karoo, Schreiner boldly addresses her society's greatest fears - the loss of faith, the dissolution of marriage, and women's social and political independence.

About this title

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

"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

From the Publisher:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0192836641
• ISBN 13: 9780192836649
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336
• Editor: Bristow Joseph