Olive Schreiner, Epistolary Practices and Microhistories: A Cultural Entrepreneur in a Historical Landscape
ABSTRACTFocusing on the letters of the South African feminist writer and social theorist Olive Schreiner (1855–1920), this article explores Schreiner's strategic uses of letter-writing as a key tool in her work as a cultural entrepreneur in a number of different social and political contexts. In advocating a microhistory approach which recognizes that macro and micro are interconnected and should be seen as lenses of perspective rather than as separate spheres, we examine various strands of Schreiner's ‘cultural project’ and consider how her epistolary activities articulated and furthered this.