Katherine Mansfield

Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield left for Great Britain in 1908 where she encountered Modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf with whom she became close friends. Her stories often focus on moments of disruption and frequently open rather abruptly.

The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield

'I was jealous of her writing. The only writing I have ever been jealous of.' Virginia WoolfVirginia Woolf was not the only writer to admire Mansfield's work: Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, and Elizabeth Bowen all praised her stories, and her early death at the age of thirty-four cut short one of the finest short-story writers in the English language.This selection covers the full range of Mansfield's fiction, from her early satirical stories to the subtly nuanced comedy of 'The Daughters of the Late Colonel' and the macabre and ominous 'A Married Man's Story'. The stories that pay what Mansfield calls 'a debt of love' to New Zealand are assharply etched as the European stories, and she recreates her childhood world with mordant insight. Disruption is a constant theme, whether the tone is comic, tragic, nostalgic, or domestic, echoing Mansfield's disrupted life and the fractured expressions of Modernism.This new edition increases the selection from 27 to 33 stories and prints them in the order in which they first appeared, in the definitive texts established by Anthony Alpers.

Selected Stories

Vanya de Lang 

I read this for University. I am really pleased with the novel. I liked all the short stories. My favourite was 'Prelude'. I would recommend this book, if you want quick short reads. The stories are exceptionally written. Also, this book is an excellent example of a modernist text.

This new selection of Mansfield's stories adds 6 stories to Dan Davin's original selection of 27 and arranges them in the order in which they first appeared, in the definitive text established by Anthony Alpers.

The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield

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