Woman in Love: Katherine Mansfield's Love Letters

by Katherine Mansfield, Nicola Saker (Editor)

Genres: Poetry

98 pages, Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 2021

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

[lucy black]

I didn’t know Katherine Mansfield was so queer. She loved fully and deeply and widely. The best letters are to her teen girl friends.

[teddybearbrown]

she writes like an angel <3 i have so many phrases I want to remember

[Arielle Friedlander]

I absolutely adore this book. It is indeed, an intimate treasure about one of the finest writers of our time. I love the way her heart bounds and flows from person to person, from friend to lover to family. I could not put it down and had to finish it in one sitting.

because I began to cry at the thought of her last letter to her father arriving after her death, I had to add this quote.
"The New Year is already here. I must leave the fire and go to bed. G-d bless you darling Father.May we meet again at not too distant a date.
Ever your devoted child, Kass"

[Steph]

This is a beautiful collection of Mansfield’s letters. Her talent and passion for life (and love) resonate from the pages. I found this a very intriguing insight into how she regarded those around her. A very special read.