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The Montana Stories
Contains all the short stories written during the last year of Katherine Mansfield's life at Montana in Switzerland, with a new and lengthy publisher's note.
These short stories have never before been published together with unfinished fragments and extracts from the Letters and Journals from those months, and new and detailed editorial notes; nor have the original illustrations that accompanied the stories' first magazine publication been previously reprinted. But by reading everything in strictly chronological order the reader understands the way a writer of genius forced herself on during this astonishingly creative period.
These short stories have never before been published together with unfinished fragments and extracts from the Letters and Journals from those months, and new and detailed editorial notes; nor have the original illustrations that accompanied the stories' first magazine publication been previously reprinted. But by reading everything in strictly chronological order the reader understands the way a writer of genius forced herself on during this astonishingly creative period.
327 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
About the author
Katherine Mansfield
1,042 books1,243 followersKathleen Mansfield Murry (née Beauchamp) was a prominent New Zealand modernist writer of short fiction who wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield.
Katherine Mansfield is widely considered one of the best short story writers of her period. A number of her works, including "Miss Brill", "Prelude", "The Garden Party", "The Doll's House", and later works such as "The Fly", are frequently collected in short story anthologies. Mansfield also proved ahead of her time in her adoration of Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov, and incorporated some of his themes and techniques into her writing.
Katherine Mansfield was part of a "new dawn" in English literature with T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. She was associated with the brilliant group of writers who made the London of the period the centre of the literary world.
Nevertheless, Mansfield was a New Zealand writer - she could not have written as she did had she not gone to live in England and France, but she could not have done her best work if she had not had firm roots in her native land. She used her memories in her writing from the beginning, people, the places, even the colloquial speech of the country form the fabric of much of her best work.
Mansfield's stories were the first of significance in English to be written without a conventional plot. Supplanting the strictly structured plots of her predecessors in the genre (Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells), Mansfield concentrated on one moment, a crisis or a turning point, rather than on a sequence of events. The plot is secondary to mood and characters. The stories are innovative in many other ways. They feature simple things - a doll's house or a charwoman. Her imagery, frequently from nature, flowers, wind and colours, set the scene with which readers can identify easily.
Themes too are universal: human isolation, the questioning of traditional roles of men and women in society, the conflict between love and disillusionment, idealism and reality, beauty and ugliness, joy and suffering, and the inevitability of these paradoxes. Oblique narration (influenced by Chekhov but certainly developed by Mansfield) includes the use of symbolism - the doll's house lamp, the fly, the pear tree - hinting at the hidden layers of meaning. Suggestion and implication replace direct detail.
Katherine Mansfield is widely considered one of the best short story writers of her period. A number of her works, including "Miss Brill", "Prelude", "The Garden Party", "The Doll's House", and later works such as "The Fly", are frequently collected in short story anthologies. Mansfield also proved ahead of her time in her adoration of Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov, and incorporated some of his themes and techniques into her writing.
Katherine Mansfield was part of a "new dawn" in English literature with T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. She was associated with the brilliant group of writers who made the London of the period the centre of the literary world.
Nevertheless, Mansfield was a New Zealand writer - she could not have written as she did had she not gone to live in England and France, but she could not have done her best work if she had not had firm roots in her native land. She used her memories in her writing from the beginning, people, the places, even the colloquial speech of the country form the fabric of much of her best work.
Mansfield's stories were the first of significance in English to be written without a conventional plot. Supplanting the strictly structured plots of her predecessors in the genre (Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells), Mansfield concentrated on one moment, a crisis or a turning point, rather than on a sequence of events. The plot is secondary to mood and characters. The stories are innovative in many other ways. They feature simple things - a doll's house or a charwoman. Her imagery, frequently from nature, flowers, wind and colours, set the scene with which readers can identify easily.
Themes too are universal: human isolation, the questioning of traditional roles of men and women in society, the conflict between love and disillusionment, idealism and reality, beauty and ugliness, joy and suffering, and the inevitability of these paradoxes. Oblique narration (influenced by Chekhov but certainly developed by Mansfield) includes the use of symbolism - the doll's house lamp, the fly, the pear tree - hinting at the hidden layers of meaning. Suggestion and implication replace direct detail.
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January 3, 2019This plump collection of Mansfield stories is an interesting proposition, the editorial decision was to collect everything, well not everything, no shopping lists or correspondence, but apparently all the fiction she wrote in a chalet at Montana-sur-Sierre in Switzerland (hence 'the Montana stories'). The stories are arranged chronologically, this gives a surprisingly different impression to that from The Garden Party and Other Stories, even though many of the same stories are in both books.
Included are some unfinished stories - one of which is in two versions quite different to each other, the story idea - a children's promised visit to the circus is the same as are the characters and the setting but the two versions are otherwise entirely different giving the impression that she wrote herself twice into a dead end, and after the second attempt decided to cut her losses and try some thing else.
Also included are some of the original illustrations from when the stories were published in magazines, amazingly the editor points out that Mansfield didn't like these illustrations - indeed they look a bit as though they could have been from the story board of a Rudolph Valentino film, not quite the bitter heartbreak flavour of a Mansfield story.
At times the unfinished stories, because they were enigmatic, had a similar haunting flavour as the micro fictions of Franz Kafka.
At the end of the volume are some notes from the editor including her short story ideas which state the location NZ (New Zealand) or L (London), names of characters, and sometimes a couple of further words. Which confirmed the impression of some of these stories as see-saws, two characters facing each other.
As in The Garden Party and Other Stories there is a lot of death, not occurring on the page necessarily, but lurking around, or hovering behind characters, deaths in the Great War like that of her brother, or the sense of a disapproving or simply absent presence (if you can forgive the oxymoron) in a character's consciousness.
Honesty caught my eye, an unfinished about two men living together in an apartment, although they kept to separate bedrooms, the narration shows this as a quasi-marriage in which one is plainly the dominant partner and the other plays a secondary subordinate part even though he pays his share of the rent, this idea of a relationship between two people as dominance and subordination - one riding high on the see-saw, the other stuck low, however seemed typical of many of the relationships shown here, irrespective of their formal status, or indeed the genders involved. It all seems bleak, you'll live a constrained existence in a box, haunted by the presence of your personal dead, and then you'll die. Thanks Katherine. All the same her people yearn for emotional connection, even though they can't communicate about their personal dead and connection easily seems to elide into being caught in a tight fitting social box, which is oddly curious given that you could read her life as one of breaking free, escaping colonial New Zealand for London, and escaping London for France, perhaps that fits together with a sense of the particular grimness of captivity?
Included are some unfinished stories - one of which is in two versions quite different to each other, the story idea - a children's promised visit to the circus is the same as are the characters and the setting but the two versions are otherwise entirely different giving the impression that she wrote herself twice into a dead end, and after the second attempt decided to cut her losses and try some thing else.
Also included are some of the original illustrations from when the stories were published in magazines, amazingly the editor points out that Mansfield didn't like these illustrations - indeed they look a bit as though they could have been from the story board of a Rudolph Valentino film, not quite the bitter heartbreak flavour of a Mansfield story.
At times the unfinished stories, because they were enigmatic, had a similar haunting flavour as the micro fictions of Franz Kafka.
At the end of the volume are some notes from the editor including her short story ideas which state the location NZ (New Zealand) or L (London), names of characters, and sometimes a couple of further words. Which confirmed the impression of some of these stories as see-saws, two characters facing each other.
As in The Garden Party and Other Stories there is a lot of death, not occurring on the page necessarily, but lurking around, or hovering behind characters, deaths in the Great War like that of her brother, or the sense of a disapproving or simply absent presence (if you can forgive the oxymoron) in a character's consciousness.
Honesty caught my eye, an unfinished about two men living together in an apartment, although they kept to separate bedrooms, the narration shows this as a quasi-marriage in which one is plainly the dominant partner and the other plays a secondary subordinate part even though he pays his share of the rent, this idea of a relationship between two people as dominance and subordination - one riding high on the see-saw, the other stuck low, however seemed typical of many of the relationships shown here, irrespective of their formal status, or indeed the genders involved. It all seems bleak, you'll live a constrained existence in a box, haunted by the presence of your personal dead, and then you'll die. Thanks Katherine. All the same her people yearn for emotional connection, even though they can't communicate about their personal dead and connection easily seems to elide into being caught in a tight fitting social box, which is oddly curious given that you could read her life as one of breaking free, escaping colonial New Zealand for London, and escaping London for France, perhaps that fits together with a sense of the particular grimness of captivity?
October 6, 2015
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007647w
1/4: Marriage a la Mode: Isobel has a happy marriage until she falls in with a racy set and begins to neglect her adoring husband. Read by Emilia Fox. 2/4: The Doll's House: The Burnell children invite their classmates to see their new toy, all except the pauper Kelsey girls. 3/4: A Cup of Tea: Rosemary Fell is accomplished and rich, but her vanity is exposed when she decides to do a good deed. 4/4: Honeymoon: By the Mediterranean sea, Fanny contemplates her future with George, a 'man of the world'.
Emilia Fox reads perfectly.
November 4, 2015
3.5 stars.
It took me a surprisingly long time to get through this short story collection, which isn't the norm for me. This was my first real experience with Mansfield - I'd read three of her short stories in Penguin Little Black Classic form before, but never an entire collection.
This collection was unusual in that it documented Katherine Mansfield's time writing in Montana, near the end of her life where she was ill with tuberculosis. For this reason, there are many stories in this collection that are unfinished, and although some of them get away with an ending left hanging, others don't at all and it took away from my enjoyment of the collection a little.
There are some absolute gems in this collection though: I think Marriage à la Mode will forever be one of my favourite short stories, and I was newly introduced to several others, including A Married Man's Story, The Doll's House, A Cup of Tea, and of course The Garden Party.
The extra Persephone additions to this volume, particularly the publisher's commentary at the end on the stories (accompanied by excerpts from Mansfield's journal and diary entries) were very interesting and heightened my enjoyment near the end of the read. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this as a good place to start with Mansfield, but it's definitely encouraged me to try and pick up more of her work.
It took me a surprisingly long time to get through this short story collection, which isn't the norm for me. This was my first real experience with Mansfield - I'd read three of her short stories in Penguin Little Black Classic form before, but never an entire collection.
This collection was unusual in that it documented Katherine Mansfield's time writing in Montana, near the end of her life where she was ill with tuberculosis. For this reason, there are many stories in this collection that are unfinished, and although some of them get away with an ending left hanging, others don't at all and it took away from my enjoyment of the collection a little.
There are some absolute gems in this collection though: I think Marriage à la Mode will forever be one of my favourite short stories, and I was newly introduced to several others, including A Married Man's Story, The Doll's House, A Cup of Tea, and of course The Garden Party.
The extra Persephone additions to this volume, particularly the publisher's commentary at the end on the stories (accompanied by excerpts from Mansfield's journal and diary entries) were very interesting and heightened my enjoyment near the end of the read. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this as a good place to start with Mansfield, but it's definitely encouraged me to try and pick up more of her work.
September 1, 2016
After reading The Garden Party and Other Stories earlier this year, I couldn't resist reading this collection which includes some of the same stories, but in a different context.
Published by the ever-wonderful Persephone Books, this collection contains all the stories and fragments which Mansfield wrote while staying in a chalet called Montana in Switzerland, while ill with the TB which was to kill her. There are some excellent little-known stories, though I think the famous ones are probably the best, not surprisingly.
It's a frustrating book in some ways, because many of the fragments are so brilliant, yet she never got the chance to work them up into full stories. I was especially struck by a first-person story told by a husband who has fallen out of love with his wife - sadly, we never find out why he speaks of her with such simmering contempt.
The book also includes extracts from Mansfield's letters and diaries, giving her thoughts on most of the stories and explaining how she hoped to develop the fragments.
Published by the ever-wonderful Persephone Books, this collection contains all the stories and fragments which Mansfield wrote while staying in a chalet called Montana in Switzerland, while ill with the TB which was to kill her. There are some excellent little-known stories, though I think the famous ones are probably the best, not surprisingly.
It's a frustrating book in some ways, because many of the fragments are so brilliant, yet she never got the chance to work them up into full stories. I was especially struck by a first-person story told by a husband who has fallen out of love with his wife - sadly, we never find out why he speaks of her with such simmering contempt.
The book also includes extracts from Mansfield's letters and diaries, giving her thoughts on most of the stories and explaining how she hoped to develop the fragments.
June 18, 2022
Good, not great. Hype oversold this collection of well written short stories, somewhat dated in its language albeit valuable for transmitting the vivid realities of a life during a time when mysogyny was widely accepted, from the perspective of a woman struggling with the obnoxious mores propping up such discourse within families and across space and time.
May 28, 2018
In 1921, Katherine Mansfield, very ill with TB went to stay in a chalet in Montana, Switzerland for her health. This period became one of her most creative periods – and the pieces in this collection are presented chronologically – which is often such an interesting way to read a writer’s work. This collection contains short stories and unfinished fragments – and some extracts from her letters in the editorial notes at the back. The unfinished stories can be a little frustrating – though still beautiful to read. Some of these unfinished pieces end less abruptly and could be seen as having an ambiguous ending – other pieces end more suddenly. Many of the stories in this edition had been previously published in The Spectator – and illustrations that accompanied those stories are reproduced here too.
With so many very short stories and fragments in this collection I am only to talk about three particular stories in any detail – but I really can’t stress how perfect every word of the whole collection is. What a truly gifted writer Katherine Mansfield was. Some other stories that will stay with me particularly are: Mr and Mrs Dove, Marriage á la Mode and A Cup of Tea, as well as the frustratingly unfinished A Married Man’s story.
In Bliss and other Stories (1920) – the collection opens with Prelude – a story still that is very memorable to me five years later. In that story we meet the Burnell family – perhaps that story is so memorable for me because it was my introduction to Katherine Mansfield. So, imagine my delight to find not one but two more stories in The Montana Stories featuring the Burnell family; At the Bay and The Doll’s House. One of the daughters of the Burnell family is Kezia – and I read something, somewhere online that suggests that Kezia is an autobiographical character, having little patience with conventional society rules. These two stories were perhaps not surprisingly among my favourites in the collection.
Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2018/...
With so many very short stories and fragments in this collection I am only to talk about three particular stories in any detail – but I really can’t stress how perfect every word of the whole collection is. What a truly gifted writer Katherine Mansfield was. Some other stories that will stay with me particularly are: Mr and Mrs Dove, Marriage á la Mode and A Cup of Tea, as well as the frustratingly unfinished A Married Man’s story.
In Bliss and other Stories (1920) – the collection opens with Prelude – a story still that is very memorable to me five years later. In that story we meet the Burnell family – perhaps that story is so memorable for me because it was my introduction to Katherine Mansfield. So, imagine my delight to find not one but two more stories in The Montana Stories featuring the Burnell family; At the Bay and The Doll’s House. One of the daughters of the Burnell family is Kezia – and I read something, somewhere online that suggests that Kezia is an autobiographical character, having little patience with conventional society rules. These two stories were perhaps not surprisingly among my favourites in the collection.
Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2018/...
October 4, 2015
From BBC Radio 4 - Extra Debut:
Episode 1: Marriage a la Mode
Isobel has a happy marriage until she falls in with a racy set and begins to neglect her adoring husband. Read by Emilia Fox.
Episode 2:
The Burnell children invite their classmates to see their new toy, all except the pauper Kelsey girls.
Episode 3: A cup of tea
Rosemary Fell is accomplished and rich, but her vanity is exposed when she decides to do a good deed.
Episode 4:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007648f
Episode 1: Marriage a la Mode
Isobel has a happy marriage until she falls in with a racy set and begins to neglect her adoring husband. Read by Emilia Fox.
Episode 2:
The Burnell children invite their classmates to see their new toy, all except the pauper Kelsey girls.
Episode 3: A cup of tea
Rosemary Fell is accomplished and rich, but her vanity is exposed when she decides to do a good deed.
Episode 4:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007648f
February 22, 2023
The stories were a bit hit or miss; I loved some but not others (and many included in this collection are unfinished fragments, which I didn’t realize till I started reading). Overall, though, I really admire Mansfield’s style and am motivated to try more of her stories. There’s something very deep but understated about her portrayal of humanity.
February 12, 2014
When I first saw that this book contained all the stories and fragments that Katherine Mansfield wrote while she was living in Montana, I thought she must have lived in the USA for a time - but in fact she and her husband John Middleton Murry rented a chalet in a small village called Montana high in the Swiss alps, hoping it would help her recover from tuberculosis.
She did some of her best work there and this book includes, for example, 'The Garden Party' and 'At The Bay'. But after about 7 months she left for Paris, and she died in France about a year after that.
I loved the stories and even some of the fragments. It's a little frustrating when you're getting into a story and you turn the page and it says "Unfinished" - especially with a long fragment called 'The Dove's Nest' which was becoming an intriguing mystery. But even these first drafts of unfinished stories are marvellously well written.
She did some of her best work there and this book includes, for example, 'The Garden Party' and 'At The Bay'. But after about 7 months she left for Paris, and she died in France about a year after that.
I loved the stories and even some of the fragments. It's a little frustrating when you're getting into a story and you turn the page and it says "Unfinished" - especially with a long fragment called 'The Dove's Nest' which was becoming an intriguing mystery. But even these first drafts of unfinished stories are marvellously well written.
Want to Read
September 7, 20157 SEP 2015 - recommended by Bettie. Thank you.
November 16, 2015
Beautifully written, but many more unfinished stories than I had expected. My favourites were:
Mr. and Mrs. Dove
At the Bay
A Married Man's Story
The Doll's House
The Fly
The Canary
Mr. and Mrs. Dove
At the Bay
A Married Man's Story
The Doll's House
The Fly
The Canary
February 22, 2018
I wanted to award this four or five stars for the amazing descriptive pieces of writing with acute observations of a certain period in history. Some are based in New Zealand and some are stories when the characters are voyaging in Europe in thirties. The real trouble, and so irritating, was the number of unfinished stories there were. I had read the introduction with the description of how the book was put together; so I expected unfinished tales. I didn’t know how disappointing it was going to be to get revved up and engaged with a story only to turn a page and it was unfinished. Katherine Mansfield’s author skills are not in doubt, however the decision to publish her unfinished stories was a mistake.
June 15, 2025
These stories, even the fragments, are nothing less than magical. There is nobody NOBODY who could get inside a moment the way Mansfield could and nobody who could write about the complex innocence of childhood. Her powers of observation and recollection were supreme. It made me sad to think of her life cut short - every unfinished story felt like a promise snatched away.
Is this the best intro to her work - probably not. But since this is my fifth Mansfield title with lots of overlaps, I don't much care. Read her and be forever changed.
Is this the best intro to her work - probably not. But since this is my fifth Mansfield title with lots of overlaps, I don't much care. Read her and be forever changed.
November 30, 2025
This probably isn’t the best way to read Mansfield’s work as you have some of her best short stories (At the Bay, The Garden Party, A Cup of Tea) mixed in with unfinished fragments, some of which are great and others of which clearly weren’t finished. But when it hits, it hits like hell. Can see why Woolf was so enamoured with her work. I need the Woolf-Mansfield version of Amadeus and I need it now
January 8, 2017
Collected writings of Katherine Mansfield as she languished in Montana-sur-Sierre (Crans Montana)
This is a curious read for the TripFiction team as the setting for her writing is very strong, but the stories and jottings themselves are from Katherine Mansfield’s imagination, whilst IN Switzerland.
At the end of May 1921 Katherine Mansfield, aged 32, was seriously ill with TB. Staying at the Hotel Château de Belle Vue (and later at the Hotel d’Angleterre) in Sierre in the Rhone Valley she saw an advertisement for Chalet des Sapins high above Sierre at a place called Montana-sur-Sierre (now Crans Montana).
Settled there she got to work on writing and this is a collection of her work written whilst she was in Switzerland. The chalet was “so high up (5000 feet above the sea) that a cool breeze filters through from Heaven, and the forests are always airy…the windows look over the tree tops across a valley to snowy peaks the other side”. Clearly an inspirational setting for writing!
The stories are very much of an era and cover all manner of situations. Musings on why couples stay together, little vignettes of card games, a mother putting her baby to bed; an outing in the Picton boat where the hard brown soap would not lather, the stiff sheets…
She may have often been lying in bed, but in her mind she was travelling. At points she was in England, bringing to life some quintessentially English situations, and off to the South of France and New Zealand, where she was born. The stories are put together chronologically and as the book nears its end, she clearly becomes more preoccupied with mortality….
The stories and fragments – some are left unfinished – are nicely brought together in this edition. The book itself is beautifully presented, in the trademark colours of Persephone Press, a gorgeous lining and matching bookmark.
This is a curious read for the TripFiction team as the setting for her writing is very strong, but the stories and jottings themselves are from Katherine Mansfield’s imagination, whilst IN Switzerland.
At the end of May 1921 Katherine Mansfield, aged 32, was seriously ill with TB. Staying at the Hotel Château de Belle Vue (and later at the Hotel d’Angleterre) in Sierre in the Rhone Valley she saw an advertisement for Chalet des Sapins high above Sierre at a place called Montana-sur-Sierre (now Crans Montana).
Settled there she got to work on writing and this is a collection of her work written whilst she was in Switzerland. The chalet was “so high up (5000 feet above the sea) that a cool breeze filters through from Heaven, and the forests are always airy…the windows look over the tree tops across a valley to snowy peaks the other side”. Clearly an inspirational setting for writing!
The stories are very much of an era and cover all manner of situations. Musings on why couples stay together, little vignettes of card games, a mother putting her baby to bed; an outing in the Picton boat where the hard brown soap would not lather, the stiff sheets…
She may have often been lying in bed, but in her mind she was travelling. At points she was in England, bringing to life some quintessentially English situations, and off to the South of France and New Zealand, where she was born. The stories are put together chronologically and as the book nears its end, she clearly becomes more preoccupied with mortality….
The stories and fragments – some are left unfinished – are nicely brought together in this edition. The book itself is beautifully presented, in the trademark colours of Persephone Press, a gorgeous lining and matching bookmark.
November 14, 2023
She has such an incredible ability to write about the everyday tragedies in such beautiful language. Love love love her stories in particular
- the fly
- A cup of tea
- Six pence
- All serene
- Six years after
- The dolls house
- The garden party
- Marriage a la mode
- The canary
- Taking the veil
In no particular order
- the fly
- A cup of tea
- Six pence
- All serene
- Six years after
- The dolls house
- The garden party
- Marriage a la mode
- The canary
- Taking the veil
In no particular order
April 29, 2017
I studied Mansfield at school and loved her so when I saw the Montana stories were being broadcast on radio 4 extra made a point of listening through. Happy to say I still love Katherine Mansfield after mumble-some years and want to hunt out some of her other work. Also, short stories. I need to read them more.
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