The Story of an African Farm

Originally published in 1883, this novel life in South Africa tells the story of Lyndall, a beautiful and restless young girl who escapes her narrow world and encounters adventure, romance, and tragedy

The Story of an African Farm (1883) marks an early appearance in fiction of Victorian society’s emerging New Woman. The novel follows the spiritual quests of Lyndall and Waldo, who each struggle against social constraints in their search for happiness and truth: Lyndall, against society’s expectations of women, and Waldo against stifling class conventions. Written from the margins of the British empire, the novel addresses the conflicts of race, class, and gender that shaped the lives of European settlers in Southern Africa before the Boer Wars.

This Broadview edition includes appendices that link the novel to histories of empire and colonialism, the emergence of the New Woman, and the conflicts between science and religion in the Victorian period. Contemporary reviews are also included.