Product Description

The Story of an African Farm (1883) marks an early appearance in fiction of Victorian society's emerging New Woman. The novel follows the spiritual quests of Lyndall and Waldo, who each struggle against social constraints in their search for happiness and truth: Lyndall, against society's expectations of women, and Waldo against stifling class conventions. Written from the margins of the British empire, the novel addresses the conflicts of race, class, and gender that shaped the lives of European settlers in Southern Africa before the Boer Wars.

This Broadview edition includes appendices that link the novel to histories of empire and colonialism, the emergence of the New Woman, and the conflicts between science and religion in the Victorian period. Contemporary reviews are also included.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #634990 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 366 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.