Mansfield, Katherine, pen name of Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp 1888-1923
New Zealand short-story writer

Born in Wellington, she was educated at Queen's College, London, returned briefly to New Zealand to study music, then left again for London in 1908, determined to pursue a literary career. Finding herself pregnant, she was installed by her mother in a hotel in Bavaria, but miscarried. The experience bore fruit in the stories collected as In A German Pension in 1911. That same year she met John Middleton Murry, and thereafter her work began to surface in Murry's Rhythm. From 1912 the couple lived together (they married in 1918), mingling with the literati, particularly D H Lawrence, who portrayed them as Gudrun and Gerald in Women in Love (1921). Her first major work was Prelude (1917), a recreation of the New Zealand of her childhood. Bliss, and other stories (1920), containing the classic stories 'Je ne parle pas fran�ais' and 'Prelude', confirmed her standing as an original and innovative writer. The only other collection published before her premature death from tuberculosis was The Garden Party, and other stories (1922). Posthumous collections include Something Childish and Other Stories (1924, published in the USA as The Little Girl and Other Stories, 1924). The Letters of Katherine Mansfield, edited by Murry, appeared in 1928 and Katherine Mansfield's Letters to John Middleton Murry 1913-1922, detailing the couple's stormy but tender relationship appeared in 1951. Vincent O'Sullivan edited Poems of Katherine Mansfield (1988), and her work for the theatre was collected in Katherine Mansfield: Dramatic Sketches (1988).

Bibliography: A Alpers, The Life of Katherine Mansfield (1980)