New Olive Schreiner letters!

Some new Schreiner letters have just been posted to the Olive Schreiner Letters Online website. Inconsequential in themselves, they point to wider matters (women’s wartime work, publication, the Bolshevik revolution) and add small pieces to the jigsaw-puzzle picture of her life, involvements and networks.

NEW – War Emergency Workers National Committee
The War Emergency Workers National Committee was formed by a range of British labour organisations during the Great War. It was concerned with pay and equality issues in circumstances of war emergency, and in particular that women occupying jobs formerly done by men might be paid less and that these lower rates would prevail post-war when men returned from war service. In July 1915 its committee decided that an Appeal to women workers doing war-work should be made, to encourage them to protect pay levels. Schreiner wrote a brief letter in support of the Appeal, and her name appeared, with others, on its printed versions. Her letter appears with the kind permission of the People’s History Museum, Manchester.

NEW ­– Allen & Unwin
Two letters from the files, the first to a woman republishing some of Schreiner’s  work and the second explaining Schreiner’s mistake about the 1918 Club. These letters appear with the kind permission of the University of Reading.

New letters are added fairly frequently as these become available, and together they add up to a substantial addition to the knowledge-base.

Last updated:  29 March 2018