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/.
AW
frequented popular Bohemian hangouts such as the Café Royal and, later, the Fitzroy Tavern.
Wickham, Anna. “Introduction”. Selected Poems, edited by David Garnett, Chatto and Windus, pp. 7-11.
9-10
Hepburn, James et al. “Anna Wickham: A Memoir”. The Writings of Anna Wickham, Free Woman and Poet, edited by Reginald Donald Smith, Virago Press, pp. 1-48.
26
According to her friend David Garnett
, she preferred the hard-up to the well-off, the doomed and...
Friends, Associates
Marie Belloc Lowndes
Her literary friends of a generation before her own included George Meredith
, Rhoda Broughton
, and Henry James
. She participated in the friendship of the two last-named by being regularly at Broughton's house...
Friends, Associates
Dora Carrington
At a party given by Dorothy Brett
at her Hampstead studio, DC
met and began a friendship with Katherine Mansfield
.
Tomalin, Claire. Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life. Alfred Knopf.
139-40
Friends, Associates
Nina Hamnett
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
Edith Ottley is now a reader of Katherine Mansfield
's and John Middleton Murry
's Rhythm.
Burkhart, Charles. Ada Leverson. Twayne.
51
Though her husband is as unsatisfactory as before, she has gained stature, dignity, and moral self-confidence, though...
Intertextuality and Influence
Tillie Olsen
By the time she entered high school she was keeping a journal in assorted and undated notebooks containing poems, bits of stories, drafts of letters, and reflections.
Reid, Panthea. Tillie Olsen: One Woman, Many Riddles. Rutgers University Press.
37
One year into high school she began...
Intertextuality and Influence
Constance Garnett
On reading these translations, Katherine Mansfield
wrote to CG
: As I laid down my copy of War and Peace tonight I knew I could no longer refrain from thanking you for the whole other...
Intertextuality and Influence
Ling Shuhua
LS and Zhimo continued to work together and he championed her work: he called her, approvingly, the Chinese Katherine Mansfield because of her style and her emphasis on the inner lives of women and girls...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth von Arnim
EA
also influenced her cousin Katherine Mansfield
(then Kathleen Beauchamp). EA
's biographer, Karen Usborne
, describes how the young Kathleen frequently reread a copy of Elizabeth and her German Garden that she had received...