author
Jacoba Elizabeth De la Rey
1856–1923
Remembered as Nonnie de la Rey, she left a rare first-person record of the Anglo-Boer War and the long months she and her children spent moving across the veld to avoid British capture. Her writing brings private courage and everyday survival into sharp focus.
1 Audiobook
A woman's wanderings and trials during the Anglo-Boer War
by Jacoba Elizabeth De la Rey
About the author
Jacoba Elizabeth de la Rey, born Jacoba Elizabeth Greeff in 1856, was a South African memoirist best known for A Woman's Wanderings and Trials during the Anglo-Boer War. A University of Pretoria study describes her as widely known in her lifetime for her tenacity during the Second Anglo-Boer War and notes that she later became an important presence in her community.
She married Jacobus Herculaas "Koos" de la Rey on October 24, 1876, and they settled near Lichtenburg. During the war years, she and her children reportedly lived a nomadic life from December 1900 until May 1902, experiences she later recorded in memoirs first published in Dutch in Amsterdam in 1903 and then in English the same year.
Her English memoir, translated by Lucy Hotz and published in London by T. Fisher Unwin in 1903, survives as a vivid personal account of war, family life, and endurance. She died in 1923.