The Reception of Olive Schreiner’s Work and Thought in the Dutch Press

This chapter explores how Olive Schreiner’s work was received in the Dutch press between the 1890s and the 1930s. During this period, the press landscape in the Netherlands reflected the ‘pillarisation’ of Dutch society – a vertical pattern of social organisation in which political and confessional divides structured all spheres of social life, bisecting or superseding other divisions such as class. Judging by the number of records in the press archives (Delpher.nl) alone, Olive Schreiner was a recognisable figure in the Netherlands, with references to and discussion of her work and opinions in periodicals representing the range of confessional and ideological pillars in Dutch society. The chapter is based on analysis of material including book reviews and announcements, readers’ letters, reprinted excerpts from Schreiner’s works, as well as references to her as a writer and progressive intellectual. These are used to illuminate the complexities of divisions among Dutch society into pillars in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The chapter assesses Schreiner’s impact on the Dutch public and explain how the contexts in which her writing and thought were referred to influenced their interpretation, with associated implications for the public image of Schreiner.