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The Olive Schreiner Letters Project is funded by the ESRC. It will transcribe, analyse and publish the complete extant Olive Schreiner letters presently in archival locations world-wide. Through this, it will also contribute theoretically and methodologically to the use of letters and other epistolary materials in social science and humanities research. The feminist and socialist writer and social theorist Olive Schreiner (1855-1920) was one of the most important - and radical social commentators of her day.

South African society and its changes over time is of particular interest for sociology and the other social sciences, because it provides a fascinating crucible for exploring the mechanisms of social change, including the eventuation of what became its distinctive overlapping hierarchies of racialised, gendered and classed inequalities, organised around segregation and then institutionalised apartheid. The 'Whites Writing Whiteness' project explores these complex matters concerning social change by focusing on one aspect of this which has been particularly associated with South Africa: it is investigating 'whites writing' and 'writing whiteness' in letter-writing and correspondences from the 1770s to the 1970s, a crucial period in South African history.