Katherine Mansfield Popular Books

Katherine Mansfield Biography & Facts

Kathleen Mansfield Murry (née Beauchamp; 14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a New Zealand writer and critic who was an important figure in the modernist movement. Her works are celebrated across the world, and have been published in 25 languages. Born and raised in a house on Tinakori Road in the Wellington suburb of Thorndon, Mansfield was the third child in the Beauchamp family. She began school in Karori with her sisters before attending Wellington Girls' College. The Beauchamp girls later switched to the elite Fitzherbert Terrace School, where Mansfield became friends with Maata Mahupuku, who became a muse for early work and with whom she is believed to have had a passionate relationship. Mansfield wrote short stories and poetry under a variation of her own name, Katherine Mansfield, which explored anxiety, sexuality and existentialism alongside a developing New Zealand identity. When she was 19, she left New Zealand and settled in England, where she became a friend of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Lady Ottoline Morrell and others in the orbit of the Bloomsbury Group. Mansfield was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis in 1917, and she died in France aged 34. Biography Early life Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp was born in 1888 into a socially prominent Wellington family in Thorndon. Her grandfather Arthur Beauchamp briefly represented the Picton electorate in parliament. Her father Harold Beauchamp became the chairman of the Bank of New Zealand and was knighted in 1923. Her mother was Annie Burnell Beauchamp (née Dyer), whose brother married the daughter of Richard Seddon. Her extended family included the author Countess Elizabeth von Arnim, and her great-granduncle was Victorian artist Charles Robert Leslie. Mansfield had two elder sisters, a younger sister and a younger brother. In 1893, for health reasons, the Beauchamp family moved from Thorndon to the country suburb of Karori, where Mansfield spent the happiest years of her childhood. She used some of those memories as an inspiration for the short story "Prelude". The family returned to Wellington in 1898. Mansfield's first printed stories appeared in the High School Reporter and the Wellington Girls' High School magazine in 1898 and 1899. Her first formally published story "His Little Friend" appeared the following year in a society magazine, New Zealand Graphic and Ladies Journal. In 1902 Mansfield became enamoured of Arnold Trowell, a cellist, but her feelings were for the most part not reciprocated. Mansfield was herself an accomplished cellist, having received lessons from Trowell's father. London and Europe She moved to London in 1903, where she attended Queen's College with her sisters. Mansfield recommenced playing the cello, an occupation that she believed she would take up professionally, but she began contributing to the college newspaper with such dedication that she eventually became its editor. She was particularly interested in the works of the French Symbolists and Oscar Wilde, and she was appreciated among her peers for her vivacious, charismatic approach to life and work. Mansfield met fellow student Ida Baker at the college, and they became lifelong friends. They both adopted their mother's maiden names for professional purposes, and Baker became known as LM or Lesley Moore, adopting the name of Lesley in honour of Mansfield's younger brother Leslie. Mansfield travelled in Continental Europe between 1903 and 1906, staying mainly in Belgium and Germany. After finishing her schooling in England she returned to New Zealand, and only then began in earnest to write short stories. She had several works published in the Native Companion (Australia), her first paid writing work, and by this time she had her heart set on becoming a professional writer. This was also the first occasion on which she used the pseudonym K. Mansfield. She rapidly grew weary of the provincial New Zealand lifestyle and of her family, and two years later, headed back to London. Her father sent her an annual allowance of 100 pounds for the rest of her life. In later years, she expressed both admiration and disdain for New Zealand in her journals, but she never was able to return there because of her tuberculosis. Mansfield had two romantic relationships with women that are notable for their prominence in her journal entries. She continued to have male lovers and attempted to repress her feelings at certain times. Her first same-sex romantic relationship was with Maata Mahupuku (sometimes known as Martha Grace), a wealthy young Māori woman whom she had first met at Miss Swainson's school in Wellington and again in London in 1906. In June 1907, she wrote:"I want Maata—I want her as I have had her—terribly. This is unclean I know but true."She often referred to Maata as Carlotta. She wrote about Maata in several short stories. Maata married in 1907, but it is claimed that she sent money to Mansfield in London. The second relationship, with Edith Kathleen Bendall, took place from 1906 to 1908. Mansfield professed her adoration for her in her journals. Return to London After having returned to London in 1908, Mansfield quickly fell into a bohemian way of life. She published one story and one poem during her first 15 months there. Mansfield sought out the Trowell family for companionship, and while Arnold was involved with another woman, Mansfield embarked on a passionate affair with his brother Garnet. By early 1909, she had become pregnant by Garnet, but Trowell's parents disapproved of the relationship, and the two broke up. She then hastily entered into a marriage with George Bowden, a teacher of singing 11 years her senior; they were married on 2 March, but she left him the same evening before the marriage could be consummated. After Mansfield had a brief reunion with Garnet, Mansfield's mother Annie Beauchamp arrived in 1909. She blamed the breakdown of the marriage to Bowden on a lesbian relationship between Mansfield and Baker, and she quickly had her daughter dispatched to the spa town of Bad Wörishofen in Bavaria, where Mansfield miscarried. It is not known whether her mother knew of this miscarriage when she left shortly after arriving in Germany, but she cut Mansfield out of her will. Mansfield's time in Bavaria had a significant effect on her literary outlook. In particular, she was introduced to the works of Anton Chekhov. Some biographers accuse her of plagiarizing Chekhov with one of her early short stories. She returned to London in January 1910. She then published more than a dozen articles in Alfred Richard Orage's socialist magazine The New Age and became a friend and lover of Beatrice Hastings, who lived with Orage. Her experiences of Germany formed the foundation of her first published collection In a German Pension (1911), which she later described as "immature". Rhythm In 1910, Mansfield submitted a lightweight story to Rhythm, a new avant-garde magazine. The piece was rejected by the magazine.... Discover the Katherine Mansfield popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Katherine Mansfield books.