Amazon.com description: Product Description: The Story of an African Farm (published 1883 under the pseudonym Ralph Iron) was South African author Olive Schreiner's first novel. This book is generally recognized as one of the first feminist novels and also as the first great South African novel. This pioneering work caused quite a stir when it first appeared and it transformed the shape and course of the late Victorian novel. Schreiner unflinchingly deals with her society's greatest fears, namely the loss of faith, the dissolution of marriage, and women's social and political independence. The setting is the vast arid plains of South Africa's Karoo region and the novel contains notable descriptions of the African landscape.