Back to Previous

Katherine Mansfield

1888–1923
Katherine Mansfield
Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images

Katherine Mansfield was born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp in Wellington, New Zealand, on October 14, 1888. Innovative, accessible, and psychologically acute, Mansfield’s numerous short stories pioneered the genre’s shape in the 20th century. Her fiction, poetry, journals, and letters cover an array of subjects: the difficulties and ambivalences of families and sexuality, the fragility and vulnerability of relationships, the complexities and insensitivities of the rising middle classes, the social consequences of war, and overwhelmingly the attempt to extract whatever beauty and vitality one can from mundane and increasingly difficult experience.

Educated in Wellington and London, Mansfield left New Zealand for England at the age of 19 to begin a career as an author. Much of Mansfield's early work is in the form of the sketch, in which a segment of life is described highly popular in journals of the time. Her first collection, In a German Pension (1911), consists primarily of sketches satirically presenting Germans from the point of view of a quiet, observant young English woman. In the following years she frequently published stories in Rhythm and The Blue Review, both edited by John Middleton Murry, whom she married in 1918 after divorcing George Bowden. The couple became well-known in London’s literary circles and were connected with D.H. Lawrence and Frieda (Weekley) Lawrence.

In France during the summer of 1915, Mansfield spent time with her brother Leslie, reflecting on their family and life in New Zealand. Tragically, Leslie was killed during training for service in WWI; “blown to bits” while demonstrating how to throw a hand grenade, remarked Mansfield. Following his death, she drew upon the memories of New Zealand discussed with her brother in writing some of her most well-known work, including Bliss and Other Stories (1920), The Garden Party, and Other Stories (1922), and her novel The Aloe (1930). 

Mansfield was plagued by tuberculosis during the last five years of her life. Mansfield’s reputation as a writer of brilliantly compressed short fiction had been well established by the time of her death. Her final works, apart from unfinished materials published by Murry after her death, are The Dove’s Nest (1923) and Something Childish (1923). At the time of her death on January 9, 1923, she had several unfinished works, including Poems (1923), which, along with The Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927) and The Letters of Katherine Mansfield (1928, 1929), were published posthumously. In his introduction to the 1930 American edition of Stories by Katherine Mansfield, Murry argued that the “essential” quality of her work was “a kind of purity,” not only one of style or vision but of her whole life, her absolute fidelity “to some spirit of truth which she served.” Above all, Mansfield has consistently been praised for the compression and understatement of her writing, as well as for her capacity to pack complex emotion and thought into the deceptively simple and direct outlines of her work.

Poems by Katherine Mansfield
More About this Poet

Bibliography

BOOKS

  • In a German Pension (London: Stephen Swift, 1911; New York: Knopf, 1926).
  • Prelude (Richmond, U.K.: Hogarth, 1918); republished, in expanded original version, as The Aloe (New York: Knopf, 1930; London: Constable, 1930).
  • Je ne parle pas français (Hampstead: Heron, 1919).
  • Bliss and Other Stories (London: Constable, 1920; New York: Knopf, 1920).
  • The Garden Party, and Other Stories (London: Constable, 1922; New York: Knopf, 1922).
  • The Doves' Nest, and Other Stories, edited by J. M. Murry (London: Constable, 1923; New York: Knopf, 1923).
  • Poems, edited by Murry (London: Constable, 1923; New York: Knopf, 1924).
  • Something Childish, and Other Stories, edited by Murry (London: Constable, 1924); republished as The Little Girl, and Other Stories (New York: Knopf, 1924).
  • The Journal of Katherine Mansfield, edited by Murry (London: Constable, 1927; New York: Knopf, 1927).
  • Novels and Novelists, edited by Murry (London: Constable, 1930; New York: Knopf, 1930).
  • Stories by Katherine Mansfield (New York: Knopf, 1930).
  • A Fairy Story (Stanford: Stanford University Library, 1932).
  • The Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield, edited by Murry (New York: Knopf, 1937).
  • To Stanislaw Wyspianski (London: Privately printed for B. Rota by the Favil Press, 1938).
  • The Scrapbook of Katherine Mansfield, edited by Murry (London: Constable, 1939; New York: Knopf, 1939).
  • Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield (London: Constable, 1945).
  • The Journal of Katherine Mansfield, "Definitive Edition," edited by Murry (London: Constable, 1954).
  • Undiscovered Country: The New Zealand Stories of Katherine Mansfield, edited by Ian Gordon (London: Longman, 1974).
  • Katherine Mansfield: Publications in Australia, 1907-09, edited by Jean E. Stone (Sydney: Wentworth Books, 1977).
  • The Urewera Notebook, edited by Gordon (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).
  • The Stories of Katherine Mansfield, edited by Antony Alpers (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).
  • The Candle Fairy: Stories, Fairy Tales & Verse for Children, edited by Alister Taylor (Auckland: Alister Taylor, 1992).

OTHER

  • Maxim Gorki, Reminiscences of Leonid Andreyev, translated by Mansfield and S. S. Koteliansky (New York: C. Gaige, 1928; London: Heinemann, 1931).
  • Maxim Gorky, Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Andreev, translated by Mansfield, Koteliansky, and Leonard Woolf (London: Hogarth Press, 1934; New York: Howard Fertig, 1995).

LETTERS

  • The Letters of Katherine Mansfield, edited by J. M. Murry (2 volumes, London: Constable, 1928; 1 volume, New York: Knopf, 1929).
  • Katherine Mansfield's Letters to John Middleton Murry, 1913-1922, edited by Murry (London: Constable / New York: Knopf, 1951).
  • The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, edited by Vincent O'Sullivan and Margaret Scott, 3 volumes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984, 1987, 1993- ).



The principal collection of Mansfield letters and manuscripts is in the Alexander Turnbull Library, now part of the National Library in Wellington, New Zealand. A few letters are in the possession of Antony Alpers and of Colin Middleton Murry, J. M. Murry's son. Substantial collection of Mansfield materials exist at the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of the New York Public Library; the British Library, London; the Mitchell Library, Sydney; the Smith College Library Rare Book Room, Northampton, Massachusetts; the Stanford University Library; the Strachey Trust, London; the Library of Sussex University; and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin.

Further Readings

  • Ruth Elvish Mantz, The Critical Bibliography of Katherine Mansfield (London: Constable, 1931).
  • B. J. Kirkpatrick, A Bibliography of Katherine Mansfield (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).
  • Ruth Elvish Mantz and J. M. Murry, The Life of Katherine Mansfield (London: Constable, 1933).
  • Murry, Between Two Worlds (London: Cape, 1935; New York: Messner, 1936).
  • Antony Alpers, Katherine Mansfield: A Biography (London: Cape, 1953).
  • Ida Baker, Katherine Mansfield: The Memories of L. M. (London: M. Joseph, 1971).
  • Jeffrey Meyers, Katherine Mansfield: A Biography (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978).
  • John Carswell, Lives and Letters: A. R. Orage, Katherine Mansfield, Beatrice Hastings, John Middleton Murry, S. S. Koteliansky, 1906-1957 (London: Faber & Faber, 1978).
  • Alpers, The Life of Katherine Mansfield (London: Cape, 1980; New York: Viking, 1980).
  • Claire Tomalin, Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life (London & New York: Viking, 1987).
  • Sylvia Berkman, Katherine Mansfield: A Critical Study (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951).
  • Elizabeth Bowen, "A Living Writer," Cornhill Magazine, 1010 (Winter 1956-1957): 121-134.
  • C. A. Hankin, Katherine Mansfield and her Confessional Stories (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983).
  • Marvin Magalaner, The Fiction of Katherine Mansfield (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971).
  • Vincent O'Sullivan, Katherine Mansfield's New Zealand (Auckland: Golden Press, 1974).
  • O'Sullivan, "The Magnetic Chain: Notes and Approaches to K. M.," Landfall: The New Zealand Quarterly, 114 (June 1975): 95-131.
  • Elisabeth Schneider, "Katherine Mansfield and Chekhov," Modern Language Notes, 50 (June 1935): 394-396.