The Reader, the Text and the Editor: On the Making of Olive Schreiner's "Letters Online" and "The World's Great Question"

There is a gap between Olive Schreiner's impressive output of publications, and the 'damaged, unproductive' view prevalent in early biographical writing about her, which has occurred in significant part as the result of the authorial and editorial activities of her estranged husband....

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Published inEnglish in Africa Vol. 42; no. 1; pp. 59 - 76
Main Author Stanley, Liz
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Grahamstown Institute for the Study of English in Africa, Rhodes University 01.05.2015
Institute for the Study of English in Africa (ISEA)
Rhodes University, Institute for the Study of English in Africa
Institute for the Study of English in Africa
Subjects
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN0376-8902
0376-8902
DOI10.4314/eia.v42i1.3

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Abstract There is a gap between Olive Schreiner's impressive output of publications, and the 'damaged, unproductive' view prevalent in early biographical writing about her, which has occurred in significant part as the result of the authorial and editorial activities of her estranged husband. For readers who want to explore further, earlier editions of Schreiner's letters have suffered from similar problems of selectivity and interpretive heavy-handedness. However, a number of issues which have arisen in two different approaches to editing – in producing the complete Olive Schreiner Letters Online and the print selection The World's Great Question – are discussed. These suggest that the relationship between the reader, the text and the editor has some intractable aspects and that repositioning the reader in relation to the text needs to take full account of the 'lateness of the reader' and the insoluble problems surrounding this.
AbstractList There is a gap between Olive Schreiner's impressive output of publications, and the 'damaged, unproductive' view prevalent in early biographical writing about her, which has occurred in significant part as the result of the authorial and editorial activities of her estranged husband. For readers who want to explore further, earlier editions of Schreiner's letters have suffered from similar problems of selectivity and interpretive heavy-handedness. However, a number of issues which have arisen in two different approaches to editing - in producing the complete Olive Schreiner Letters Online and the print selection The World's Great Question - are discussed. These suggest that the relationship between the reader, the text and the editor has some intractable aspects and that re-positioning the reader in relation to the text needs to take full account of the 'lateness of the reader' and the insoluble problems surrounding this.
First and Scott's biography, published in 1980, appeared in this context and was a landmark in two important respects. [...]the place of the reader and whether her/his 'lateness' is a fixture or could be changed was much in my mind throughout. Because of her particular way of working out her analytical ideas, which is very much embedded in letters that otherwise deal with the everyday, it is often hard to pin down where the turning-points are. No second Rive volume appeared, because of his untimely death. 7. Because copying facilities were limited. 8.
There is a gap between Olive Schreiner's impressive output of publications, and the 'damaged, unproductive' view prevalent in early biographical writing about her, which has occurred in significant part as the result of the authorial and editorial activities of her estranged husband. For readers who want to explore further, earlier editions of Schreiner's letters have suffered from similar problems of selectivity and interpretive heavy-handedness. However, a number of issues which have arisen in two different approaches to editing--in producing the complete Olive Schreiner Letters Online and the print selection The World's Great Question--are discussed. These suggest that the relationship between the reader, the text and the editor has some intractable aspects and that repositioning the reader in relation to the text needs to take full account of the 'lateness of the reader' and the insoluble problems surrounding this.
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Criticism and interpretation
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Schoeman, Karel (1939-2017)
Schreiner, Olive
Schreiner, Olive (1855-1920)
Scott, Ann
South African literature
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Title The Reader, the Text and the Editor: On the Making of Olive Schreiner's "Letters Online" and "The World's Great Question"
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