Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #95491 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 200 pages

Paula M. Krebs, Wheaton College
"This excellent edition allows us to read the novel in its important social, political, and literary contexts...an important achievement."

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 the Author
Patricia O'Neill is a Professor of English at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY.

Customer Reviews

A remarkable story
The Story of an African Farm is an account about a family and how they interact in a South African farm. This is a book that is hard to put down. With is unfamiliar depiction of life style unfamiliar , it still comes out as engaging, inspirational and real. This is striking thing about the story is its deep portrayal of women . This is a highly recommendable book for readers who want to get a good grasps of the different perceptions and treatment of women in our world. It reminded me of another great read, The Usurper and Other.

A beautiful and fascinating book
This book is in two parts and was originally published with these in separate editions. In part two, you could be reading a different novel. The children have grown and so the protagonists changed. This book is notorious for Lyndall, the feminist cousin. I, on the other hand, thought that the really special part of this book was a section in the middle describing a person's relationship with religion and god, and the young German Waldoff. I found that the feminism came accross as a lecture and let the novel down. This book is certainly worth a read. I'll read more Olive Schreiner after this.