Mansfield, Katherine, pseudonym of Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp (1888–1923), was born in Wellington, New Zealand, but educated largely in London. In 1909 she married, but left her husband after a few days; she became pregnant by another man and gave birth to a stillborn child in Bavaria, an experience that formed the background to her first collection of stories
In a German Pension (1911), most of which were previously published in
Orage's New Age. In 1911 she met John
Middleton Murry, whom she was to marry in 1918; he was editing
Rhythm, to which, and to its successor the
Blue Review, she also contributed stories, many based on her New Zealand childhood. In 1918 ‘Prelude’ was published by the
Hogarth Press, and later in a collection,
Bliss, and Other Stories (1920). She was increasingly recognized as an original and experimental writer, whose stories were the first in English to show the influence of
Chekhov. She had for some time been suffering from tuberculosis.
The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922) was the third and last collection to be published in her lifetime: in that year she entered the institute run by
Gurdjieff near Fontainebleau, hoping to regain spiritual and physical health, and died the following January. Her stories vary greatly in length and tone, from long, impressionistic, delicate evocations of family life (‘At the Bay’, ‘Prelude’) to short, sharp sketches such as ‘Miss Brill’. Two collections were published posthumously (
The Dove's Nest, 1923;
Something Childish, 1924) as well as various collections of letters, extracts from her journal, etc. Her
Collected Letters (4 vols, 1984–96) were edited by V. O'Sullivan and M. Scott.
