Katherine Mansfield, Modernist Pioneer

Dr. Delia da Sousa Correa (The Open University)

The early modernist Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was hailed by writer Elizabeth Bowen as having transformed ‘for good and all our idea of what goes to make a story’. ‘We owe to her the prosperity of the “free” story’ Bowen asserted, ‘she untrammelled it from conventions and, still more, gained for it a prestige till then unthought of. How much ground Katherine Mansfield broke for her successors may not be realized’.

Mansfield published five collections of stories during her brief lifetime. Others were published posthumously and her work has remained constantly in print and much enjoyed by readers in the near-century since her death. And Mansfield, who for Bowen, in the 1950s, was a ‘missing contemporary’, has continued to inspire the work of later writers in numerous languages. Current writers in English who claim her as a major influence include Margaret Drabble, Jaqueline Wilson and Ali Smith.

This talk will discuss a selection of stories that demonstrate the formal innovations that characterise Mansfield’s prose and its powerful, if frequently indirect, engagement with human experience. The stories are selected from across her career and are related to the places in which Mansfield lived: New Zealand, Britain, Germany, France, and finally, Switzerland.

Selected List of Katherine Mansfield Stories

• ‘Frau Brechenmacher Attends a Wedding’ (1910)
• ‘The Woman at the Store’ (1912)
• ‘An Indiscreet Journey’ (1915)
• ‘Prelude’ (1918)
• ‘Pictures’ (1919)
• ‘The Wind Blows’ (1915/1920)
• ‘At the Bay’ (1921)
• ‘The Garden Party’ (1921)

Free digital versions of Mansfield’s stories can be found via the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre www.nzetc.org  

Also at https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/mansfield/katherine/

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