AFTER FIFTY YEARS OF UNION OLIVE SCHREINER’S VIEWS, FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1908, ARE STILL REMARKABLY VALID, AND HER PREDICTIONS ARE, AMAZINGLY TRUE. 1958

Only the front of the dj is original – the rest is added; hand-printed title on spine. Book has all pages uniformly tanned. 34pp

Olive Schreiner was one of those very rare personalities whose special gifts of insight into, and perception of, the eternal verities that in the last resort determine the course of human affairs, charge them with a message to all mankind, both of the generation into which they are born, and those that are to follow after.

On the eve of the birth of the Union of South Africa, Olive Schreiner published her Closer Union, originally in the form of a series of letters in the Transvaal Leader. In it she sought to warn the peoples of South Africa and, more particularly, the delegates to the National Convention, of the dangers of an attempt to fuse the four South African colonies into a unified, centralized state, and she pleaded for closer union within the framework of a federal constitution.

It will be for each reader to judge, in the light of the history of the past half century, whether this warning and this plea were justified.