The Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield

by Katherine Mansfield

This anthology of 73 completed and 15 incomplete short stories includes The Modern Soul, A Dill Pickle, and Weak Heart

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Collections

688 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1937

About the author

Kathleen 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.

Reviews

[S. Mehdi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The collection includes:

From Bliss (1920): Prelude,Je ne parle pas français, Bliss, Psychology, Pictures, The Man without a Temperament, Mr. Reginald Peacock's Day, Sun and Moon,Feuille d'Album, A Little Pickle, The little Governess

From The Garden-Party (1922): At the Bay, The Garden-Party, The Daughters of the Late Colonel, Mr. and Mrs. Dove, Life of Ma Parker, Marriage a la Mode, The Voyage, Miss Brill, Her First Ball, The Stranger

From The Dove's Nest (1923): The Doll's House, A Cup of Tea, The Fly, The Canary

[Petra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Katherine Mansfield is definitely my favourite writer of short stories. This collection is definitely a good taste of her brilliance and I enjoyed dipping in and out of it for a month or so. There is something so striking about Mansfield's way of writing. She is ruthless, quick, brilliant. No wonder Virginia Woolf was envious of her skills. I definitely want to reread The Garden Party at some point. My favourite short stories by her are definitely from that collection. Especially I love At the Bay and Marriage A la Mode. She describes love, passion and loneliness in such colourful and brilliant detail. Some of the stories felt a bit too same for me but most of them were beautiful and melancholic.

[Alec]

I may revisit these stories in the future, but reading them has been such a drag. Mansfield has a way of describing scenery, but so many of the stories feel empty and way too short. As plebeian as this may sound, The Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield seems to be a prime example of literary figures saying that a work is genius, just because it isn't popular.

[T · Rating 2 out of 5]

(Inte rätt samling egentligen men den jag läste fanns inte)

Hm, ja. Inget för mig, gillade nog bara den första ”Bliss” och den sista novellen ”Psykologi”

[Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this book contains all of Katherine Mansfield's short stories. My rating would be higher if it had contained her later works. Needless to say, as she matured as a writer, the quality of her stories improved. I checked out this book from the library after I had read "The Canary." It is the last short story Mansfield completed. Unfortunately, just as she had mastered her craft, Mansfield died at the age of 34. In this book, her unfinished stories follow "The Canary." Some of them almost stand on their own. The others underscore what a loss to literature was the premature passing of Mansfield.

[Shelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing was fine and The Garden Party is still current but the other stories I read were simply veiled tales of lesbian/gay love; unrecognized, unrequited, and unpleasant in my opinion. I understand why she is counted among the foremost of short story-tellers - she does it, as Middleton-Murry claims, almost effortlessly and naturally. However, it's always sad to me when great fiction writers choose to write about less-than-great events. I'm sort of glad I read this but I don't think I'd recommend anything other than The Garden Party to anyone.

[Jill Blevins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very short stories, very original, almost science-fiction-like in that they're written about such a different time and place, where people ride trains, don't have a lot of clothes and food, and life is harder but simpler. I could only read about a third of them before I had to get back to life with cell phones and air conditioning, but I plan to return someday, just like I plan to go back to rural Guatemala. Just have to work up to it.

[Jan Szczerbiuk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I was expecting a focus on the well-heeled middle classes (a la Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen) and while that is pretty much the environment for most of these stories, there is a surprising focus on the outcast and the marginalised, which tends to show polite society in a poor light. Excellent.

[Vahnabel0 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think it's the edition i'm reading but, anyway, Katherine Mansfield.
I like the author's style and her way to say what she want to say (and what she doesn't want to mean!).

[Ruth · Rating 2 out of 5]

UGH!!

[Amyem]

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/3...

[Hannah Mccarney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feminist Modernism at its best. Everyone can take something away from Mansfield's' writing

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carefully crafted and often just a few pages in length, each of these vignettes took me far beyond the printed page. The short story raised to art form.

[Scarlett O'H. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just can't stand the condescending tone of her narratives. I wanted to find out what it is that Virginia Woolf admired so much in her. I frankly don't get it.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cruel little woman

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice stories, the only drawback to me is that 100 years old language and realities take quite an effort to digest sometimes, it's pretty different from the modern short stories.

[Maureen Mathews · Rating 5 out of 5]

She features in Spring, so I thought I'd revisit Mansfield. Brilliant!

[solitaryfossil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant and recommended. Some of these jewels remind me of Virginia Woolf’s observant writing style, but with sharper teeth, and maybe a meaner bite. Wonderful stories.

[RD Chiriboga Moncayo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gender, class, love, dissatisfaction and most of all, loneliness are explored in this excellent collection of short stories.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF. Some stories were excellent, some baffling. Worth sampling, though I didn’t read them all.

[meron · Rating 4 out of 5]

great introduction to Mansfield’s works! but bro anne is deeply unserious like it hurt me too