WOMAN: A FEW SHRIEKS! (Olive Schreiner’s copy heavily annotated in her hand)

Setting Forth the Necessity of Shrieking till Shrieks be Heard, by X.

With an Appendix by Mrs Philip Snowden.

This book is offered to those women on the fighting line who have had the courage to face ridicule, and the wit to turn the laugh upon their enemies by their indifference to derision.
142 pages, bound into recent full red leather gilt, preserving the original grey printed card cover (the author’s name appears on the cover but not on the title page) signed by Olive Schriener at the top, some light foxing. Almost every page bears ink underlining and annotations by Schriener.

Constance Smedley (1881-1941) author, illustrator and campaigner for women's rights. She published this feminist tract, Woman: A Few Shrieks, under the pseudonym ‘X’ in 1907. It evidently caught Olive Shcreiner's attention. She writes in an letter dated 1907, "I shall be down with my husband about the 21st & will let you know where we are staying. I fancy it will be the Royal in Plein Street. Have you read a most splendid thing called "Woman, a few shrieks" by a Miss Smedley. The humour is grand." (Olive Schreiner Letters Online - http://www.oliveschreiner.org/vre?view=collections&colid=113&letterid=17).