Introduction

‘This of course is not a justification of my method but touches what seems to me a weakness and shallowness in your mode of criticism’ (Cronwright-Schreiner, The Letters of Olive Schreiner 99). When Olive Schreiner wrote these words to her lifelong friend and correspondent Havelock Ellis, she might well have addressed them to the numerous critics of later years who have found fault with her method, especially with her approach to narrative and plot. Like Ellis, many of these critics have viewed her as a talented but incomplete writer, ‘one half of a great writer; a diamond marred by a flaw’, as Virginia Woolf observed (103). An early anonymous review mentions ‘the vagueness and indeterminate convolutions of the plot’ (Young Man 71); G.W. Cross said in 1897, ‘Plot has never been the author's strong point’ (86); Hugh Walpole repeated the assumption in 1927 when he wrote ‘construction was never Olive Schreiner's strong suit’ (91); and Uys Krige in 1955 asserted that ‘the young poet … is at loggerheads with the incipient novelist to the detriment of the unity or balance of her work’ (77). In all of these responses, the passion of the writing is seen to be the factor which undermines its structure.