Sarah Millin

Sarah Gertrude Millin, née Liebson (19 March 1889 – 6 July 1968), was a South African author.
Biography.
Millin was born in Žagarė, Kovno Governorate on 19 March 1889, was one of a family of seven children. Five months later her parents, Isaiah and Olga, immigrated to South Africa and the family settled in Beaconsfield near Kimberley. In 1894, when she was six years old, they moved to the diamond diggings on the banks of the Vaal River in the Kimberley area where her father opened a trading store. This environment was to provide the setting for much of her future work that combined a love of the South African landscape with an abhorrence of the poverty and squalor in which most of the diggers lived. After matriculating at Kimberley High School for Girls in 1904 she chose not to take up the bursaries offered to her to attend the university at the South African College in Cape Town but instead studied music in Kimberley. She obtained a piano teacher’s certificate but never practiced that career. From the age of six she had been convinced that writing was her destiny and had begun writing short stories at an early age. Some of her first compositions appeared in newspapers in the years 1910 to 1912.
On 1 December 1912 she married Philip Millin and they settled in Johannesburg. Philip, a lawyer who later became a judge of the Supreme Court, encouraged her literary ambitions. Philip Millin died of heart failure on the bench while she had just begun to write her autobiography "The Measure of My Days", an event which affected her deeply.
She died in Johannesburg.
Bibliography.
Non-fiction.
"The South Africans" was Millin's first foray into non-fiction. It was published in the UK in 1926 by Constable & Co. Ltd, and in the US in 1927 by Boni & Liveright.
"Men on a Voyage" differs from anything else Millin ever produced. It consists of thoughts and essays on various subjects. "Men on a Voyage" was only released in the UK and the Commonwealth, and was published in 1930 by Constable & Co. Ltd.
Her biography of Cecil Rhodes is still considered to be an authoritative source of information on the Diamond Magnate's life. Chatto & Windus published "Rhodes" in 1933, and then a revised edition in 1952. Harper & Brothers released the work in the US in 1933 under the title "Cecil Rhodes". Millin is credited as one of the contributors to the screenplay for the film "Rhodes of Africa", which was released in 1936 and starred Walter Huston. To coincide with the release of "Rhodes of Africa", Grosset & Dunlap reprinted this biography in the US under the title "Cecil Rhodes, Empire Builder".
"General Smuts" is Millin's second biography. In 1936 it was published in two volumes. Faber & Faber served the UK market while Little, Brown and Company served the American market.
Millin contributed the chapter on South Africa contained in "The British Commonwealth & Empire" (nonfiction, W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1943)
"The People of South Africa" is an expansion of "The South Africans" of 1926. Constable & Co. Ltd published it in 1951 in the UK and Alfred A Knopf published it in America in 1954.
Millin acted as editor of "White Africans are also people", published in 1966 in South Africa by Howard Timmons, and in the UK by Bailey Swinfen.
"South Africa" published by William Collins of London 1941, Editor W. J. Turner. a part of the Britain In Pictures series. 48 pages, illustrated 12 colour plates and 28 black and white illustrations. Produced by ADPRINT LONDON, Printed in Great Britain by Harrison & Sons Ltd. London. Printers to His Majesty the King.