Katherine Mansfield
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one of our great modernists, her innovations so familiar as to be unnoticeable. As well as one of the most interesting and original short-story writers of the Modernist movement, she was a significant letter-writer and diarist. Her poetry, too, is of interest. Claire Tomalin remarked that her diary in particular has made her a cult figure for young women.
's life was short and much of her writing experimental or oriented towards earning. Though contemporary reviewers sometimes condescended to her youth, gender, and magazine publication, she is now seen as
Biography
Katherine Mansfield was originally a pseudonym used solely for writing, but by July 1910 it was also in daily use.
had a passion for renaming and recreating herself. Antony Alpers, her biographer, cites a number of names she used, including Catherine, Kass, Kassie, Katie, Katharina, Katherine, Kathie Schönfeld, and Mrs Kathleen Beauchamp Bowden. In another biographical study, Gillian Boddy adds Elizabeth Stanley to the list and suggests, on the authority of a friend of
's, that she used more than twenty names and pseudonyms, and constructed distinct personalities for each of them.