Katherine Mansfield

Who is Katherine Mansfield?

Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp, who wrote as Katherine Mansfield, was born in Wellington on 14 October 1888 into a prosperous colonial family. Educated partly in London, she settled permanently in England and Europe, becoming one of the most important modernist writers in the English language and a pioneer of the modern short story. Her spare, psychologically acute stories drew on memories of her New Zealand childhood as well as European settings. Major collections include 'Bliss and Other Stories' (1920) and 'The Garden Party and Other Stories' (1922), containing celebrated pieces such as 'The Garden Party', 'At the Bay', 'Prelude' and 'The Doll's House'. She moved in literary circles that included D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, who regarded Mansfield as a serious rival. She married the critic John Middleton Murry. After years of ill health she died of tuberculosis at Fontainebleau, France, on 9 January 1923, aged only 34.

Sources: Katherine Mansfield, 'The Garden Party and Other Stories' (1922) · Katherine Mansfield, 'Bliss and Other Stories' (1920) · Antony Alpers, 'The Life of Katherine Mansfield' (1980)