Katherine Mansfield
pseudonym of Kathleen Mansfield
Beauchamp, married name Kathleen Mansfield
Murry
born Oct. 14, 1888, Wellington, N.Z.
died Jan. 9, 1923, Gurdjieff Institute, near
Fontainebleau, France
New Zealand-born English master of the short
story, who evolved a distinctive prose style
with many overtones of poetry. Her delicate
stories, focused upon psychological
conflicts, have an obliqueness of narration
and a subtlety of observation that reveal
the influence of Anton Chekhov. She, in
turn, had much influence on the development
of the short story as a form of literature.
After her education (in Wellington and
London), Katherine Mansfield left New
Zealand at the age of 19 to establish
herself in England as a writer. Her initial
disillusion appears in the ill-humoured
stories collected in In a German Pension
(1911). Until 1914 she published stories in
Rhythm and The Blue Review, edited by the
critic and essayist John Middleton Murry,
whom she married in 1918 after her divorce
from George Bowden. The death of her soldier
brother in 1915 shocked her into a
recognition that she owed what she termed a
sacred debt to him and to the remembered
places of her native country. Prelude (1918)
was a series of short stories beautifully
evocative of her family memories of New
Zealand. These, with others, were collected
in Bliss (1920), which secured her
reputation and is typical of her art.
In the next two years Mansfield did her
best work, achieving the height of her
powers in The Garden Party (1922), which
includes “At the Bay,” “The Voyage,” “The
Stranger” (with New Zealand settings), and
the classic “Daughters of the Late Colonel,”
a subtle account of genteel frustration. The
last five years of her life were shadowed by
tuberculosis. Her final work (apart from
unfinished material) was published
posthumously in The Dove’s Nest (1923) and
Something Childish (1924).
From her papers, Murry edited the Journal
(1927, rev. ed. 1954), and he also published
with annotations her letters to him (1928,
rev. ed. 1951). Her collected letters were
edited by Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret
Scott (1984–2008); Scott also edited
Mansfield’s notebooks (1997).
