Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Katherine Mansfield
-
Standard Name: Mansfield, Katherine
Birth Name: Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp
Nickname: Wig
Nickname: Kissienka
Married Name: Kathleen Mansfield Murry
Self-constructed Name: Katherine Mansfield
Pseudonym: Katherine Mansfield
Pseudonym: K. M.
Pseudonym: Boris Petrovsky
KM
'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 one of our great modernists, her innovations so familiar as to be unnoticeable.
Gunn, Kirsty. “How the Laundry Basket Squeaked”. London Review of Books, Vol.
35
, No. 7, pp. 25-6.
25
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.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
The following year NH
met Anna Wickham
, who took her in when she had flu, with a dangerously high temperature, and did not want to go back to her family. At that time NH
Friends, Associates
Enid Bagnold
With Dolly Tylden
, EB
occupied a three-bedroom flat and lived in what she recognized as mock poverty.
Sebba, Anne. Enid Bagnold: The Authorized Biography. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
31
In Chelsea she socialised with other artists, including Henri Gaudier
(who sculpted a bust of...
Friends, Associates
Virginia Woolf
VW
and Katherine Mansfield
first met; before this Woolf had asked Lytton Strachey
to arrange a meeting between them.
Bishop, Edward. A Virginia Woolf Chronology. Macmillan.
VM
met Lawrence
through Ivy Low
. Enthusiastic about his writing, she offered to lend him her cottage and to do his typing. During his stay on the Meynells' property, Lawrence introduced Viola to Ottoline Morrell
EA
inspired a number of creative portraits by her contemporaries during the earlier part of her career. Probably the best-known is the character of Mrs Failing in E. M. Forster
's novel The Longest Journey...
Family and Intimate relationships
Ada Leverson
AL
's three sisters all married socially prominent Jewish husbands.
Speedie, Julie. Wonderful Sphinx: The Biography of Ada Leverson. Virago.
239-40
Family and Intimate relationships
Fleur Adcock
She later wrote, Marrying was what we did in those days.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
She also told an interviewer that she had seen her husband across a crowded room and snapped him up for his physical beauty. He...
Family and Intimate relationships
Tillie Olsen
Their next child (also, as the nurses said, just a girl) was born on 17 November 1943. She was named Katherine Jo Olsen for Käthe Kollwitz
, Katherine Mansfield
, Kate Kennedy
(a pioneer of...
Family and Intimate relationships
Elizabeth von Arnim
EA
made contact with Katherine Mansfield
after discovering through Frank Swinnerton
that Mansfield was a New Zealand cousin, formerly named Kathleen Beauchamp. A friendship ensued.
Usborne, Karen. "Elizabeth": The Author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden. Bodley Head.
217
Family and Intimate relationships
Dorothy Brett
As well as sharing a house in Hampstead for some time with her close and loyal friend Mansfield
, DB
lived for a while with Mark Gertler
as her lodger (who, however, was not her...
Family and Intimate relationships
Dorothy Brett
DB
's younger sister, Sylvia, later Lady Brooke
, born in 1885, is herself of no minor literary significance. She authored numerous works including two autobiographies, romance novels, and short stories, and claimed J. M. Barrie
Education
Tillie Olsen
At home the Lerner children learned Yiddish songs and made up silly plays.
Reid, Panthea. Tillie Olsen: One Woman, Many Riddles. Rutgers University Press.
27
Tillie was a difficult child, skipping family chores to spend time at the public library, with its huge painting of...