From Man to Man or Perhaps Only, Olive Schreiner
From Man to Man or Perhaps Only, Olive Schreiner
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From Man to Man or Perhaps Only—

Author: Olive Schreiner, Dorothy Driver, Dorothy Driver

Narrator: Clare Staniforth

Unabridged: 18 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/21/2026


Synopsis

Olive Schreiner's From Man to Man or Perhaps Only―, unfinished at the time of her death and posthumously published in 1926, tells the story of two white women born into the racist society of mid-nineteenth-century South Africa. One sister remains in the British Cape Colony and finds a way to deal with her husband's infidelities. The other, raped at age fifteen, is hounded out of her insular white South African community, and becomes a kept woman in London's East End. Addressing the ill-effects of a male-dominated imperial capitalism, and positing an equivalence between marriage and prostitution in a society where women's function is primarily sexual, the novel foregrounds the perspective of a young black girl in order to place before its readers the vision of what Schreiner called an "expanded and enlarged humanity."

Edited by Dorothy Driver, and based partly on manuscript amendments by Schreiner, this edition reproduces two alternative endings, one apparently told to her husband-editor, and summarized by him, and the other she wrote in a letter to a friend. Driver also provides literary, historical, and linguistic context with an in-depth introduction. This edition includes extracts from Schreiner's letters and journals that cast light on the genesis, composition, and final abandonment of the novel.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jonathan on April 06, 2015

A wonderful book, though tragically unfinished, which, to my mind, successfully marries the tradition of the semi-melodramatic tale and that of the political essay. I found it a real page-turner, in the old style, as well as a deeply moving record of an intelligent and passionate woman's thoughts. T......more

Goodreads review by Antonio Luis on April 14, 2025

He disfrutado mucho esta narración sencilla, realista, feminista pero tradicional y victoriana muy de su época, protagonizada por dos hermanas que crecen en la ciudad de El Cabo: Rebekah, la mayor, nos muestra a través de sus escritos, de sus debates internos y de su forma de educar a sus hijos, el......more

Goodreads review by Jim on February 08, 2023

Schreiner wrote parts of this novel throughout her career and did not complete it before she died. Parts of it (especially the first six chapters) are brilliantly done—interconnected short stories, told in beautiful language, about two sisters raised in isolation on a South African farm at the turn......more

Goodreads review by ValerieR on January 25, 2017

This book really struck a chord with me, what with the women's matches and all the unrest in our world right now. It made me ponder about how far we have come since then, and how some things remain the same. (The relationships between men and women, how society views women: maiden, mother, whore; an......more

Goodreads review by Ratita de biblio on January 05, 2026

Olive Schreiner, nacida en Sudáfrica a mediados del siglo XIX, es una de las grandes y más desconocidas escritoras del continente africano. Autodidacta, activista política y pionera feminista en la región, la autora cuenta con obras de renombre como su famosa Historia de una granja africana, o Mil n......more