1855 24 March: born at Wittebergen, Basutoland. Christened Olive Emilie Albertina, the ninth child of Gottlob Schreiner and Rebecca Schreiner née Lyndall, missionaries first sponsored in South Africa by the London Missionary Society.

1866 Gottlob Schreiner declared insolvent. Family disperses.

1867 Joins older brother Theo and attends his school at Cradock.

1870 Works for cousin at Lily Hope, Avoca, in first position as a governess.

1871 Meets free-thinking Willie Bertram at Hermon mission station. Reads his copy of Herbert Spencer's First Principles which confirms her agnosticism. Her asthma attacks begin at around this time. Schreiner announces that she is to be called "Olive," not "Emilie" any more.

1872 Briefly engaged to Julius Gau, a representative of a Swiss insurance company, whom Schreiner met through the Robinsons' network of free-thinkers. Joins her older brother Theo and older sister Ettie at the diamond-fields at New Rush (later know as Kimberley). Teaches children of local diggers. Starts Undine and short stories.

1874 Purchases Ralph Waldo Emerson's Essays.

1875 Undine nearly completed. Reading John Stuart Mill's Logic. Teaching at the Fouches at Klein Ganna Hoek farm near Cradock.

1876 Father dies. Based at Ratel Hoek near Tarkastad. Reading Goethe and Montaigne.

1879 Works for the Cawoods at Ganna Hoek. Early version of African Farm complete.

1880 Sends manuscript of African Farm to the Browns in England. Publisher turns it down. Works on suggested revisions.

1881 Travels to England. Enrols as a nurse at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary but has to give up after several days because of ill-health. Seeks publisher for African Farm.

1883 Chapman and Hall accept African Farm on the recommendation of a reader's report by the eminent novelist, George Meredith. Published in two volumes in January, the novel proves as immediate success, and a second edition quickly follows. Fifteen editions will appear in Schreiner's lifetime.

1884 Meets the sexologist Havelock Ellis and forms very close friendship with him.

1885 Participates in the radical Men and Women's Club convened by the free-thinking Karl Pearson, to whom Schreiner is strongly drawn. Meets the radical socialist and homosexual emancipationist Edward Carpenter through the Fellowship of the New Life. George Moore, Irish exponent of naturalism in the novel, proposes to her; Schreiner declines him.

1886 Intellectual relationship with Pearson breaks down. Suffers mental and physical collapse. Leaves England for Europe. Still working on From Man to Man. Bryan Donkin, physician to many radical intellectuals, proposes to her; Schreiner declines him.

1887 Seeks publisher for her collection of allegorical and visionary writings.

1889 Meets the "decadent" and "symbolist" poet and critic Arthur Symons. Returns to South Africa in October.

1890 Begins series of periodical essays on South Africa (collected posthumously in 1923). Meets Cecil Rhodes in Cape Town. Settes in Matjesfontein.

1891 Dreams published.

1892 Meets Samuel "Cron" Cronwright, an ostrich farmer. Working on further allegories, including "The Buddhist Priest's Wife."

1893 Visits friends and family in England. Dream Life and Real Life published.

1894 Marries Cronwright. He, unusually, takes her name. Asthma attacks severe during summer months, forcing the newly-weds to leave for the better climate of Kimberley.

1895 Baby dies shortly after birth. No less than six miscarriages will follow.

1896 Publishes (with Cronwright-Schreiner) The Political Situation.

1897 Travels to England to publish fictional attack on Rhodes, Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland.

1898 Moves to Johannesburg.

1899 Outbreak of second Anglo-Boer War. Publishes her pro-Boer anti-war tract, An English South African's View of the Situation, causing offence to her brother Will, Prime Minister of the Cape Colony.

1900 Prominent in the women's protest movement in the Cape. Living under martial law in Hanover.

1902 Working on Woman and Labour, From Man to Man, and several stories, including "Eighteen -Ninety-Nine."

1903 Mother, a Roman Catholic convert, dies.

1906 Publishes pamphlet, Letter on the Jew.

1908 Supports South African federation. Letter on women's suffrage appears in Cape Times.

1909 Publishes Closer Union in London. Supports Mahatma Gandhi's satyagraha movement.

1911 Publishes Woman and Labour in London.

1913 Vice-President of Women's Enfranchisement Leage at Kalk Bay. Resigns because the League wants vote for white women only. Sails for England.

1914 Schreiner traveling in Germany at the outbreak of the First World War. Goes to London. Begins work on pacifist tract, The Dawn of Civilisation (fragments published posthumously in Stories, Dreams, and Allegories.

1916 Publishes pacifist propaganda in Labour Leader.

1919 Suffering from depression.

1920 Cronwright-Schreiner travels to England after separation of five years. Returns to South Africa. Dies of heart failure on 10 December at Wynberg.

1923 Stories, Dreams, and Allegories and Thoughts on South Africa published.

1924 Cronwright-Schreiner edits The Life of Olive Schreiner and The Letters of Olive Schreiner 1870-1920.

1926 From Man to Man published.

1929 Undine published.

(Source: Introduction. The Story of an African Farm. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. xxxiii-xxxvi.)

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