Schreiner, Olive Emilie Albertina (1855–1920)

South African novelist and supporter of women's rights. Her 1883 novel autobiographical The Story of an African Farm (published under the pseudonym Ralph Iron) which describes life on the South African veld, is recognized as the founding text of South African fiction, particularly for its determination to depict its context as the norm rather than the exotic. It was also radical for its presentation of the New Woman in the figure of Lyndall, a proto-feminism that Schreiner later elaborated in her feminist classic Women and Labour (1911). Schreiner wrote two further novels (both published posthumously), Undine (1928) and From Man to Man (1926).

Her other works include Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland (1897), a fictional attack on the expansionist policies of Cecil Rhodes, collections of allegories, and the discursive Thoughts on South Africa.