Chapter & Verse - Katherine Mansfield

By Katherine Mansfield

Literature is a world of words and wonder, able to take us on almost unimaginable journeys from the wild and fantastic to the grind and minutiae of life.

An author’s ideas are his building blocks, his architecture of the mind, building a structure on which all else will rest; the narrative, the characters, the words - those few words that begin the adventure.

In this series we look at some of our leading classic authors across two genres: the short story and the poem. In this modern world there is an insatiable need to categorise and pigeon-hole everyone and everything. But ideas, these grains and saplings of the brain, need to roam, to explore and find their perfect literary use vehicle. Our authors are masters of many literary forms, perhaps known for one but themselves favouring another.

Story. Poems. Story. Within these boundaries come all manner of invention and cast of characters. And, of course, each author has their own way of revealing their own chapter and verse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chapter & Verse
• Release date: Feb 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9781835474044

Katherine Mansfield

Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp was born in New Zealand in 1888. Her father sent her and her sisters to school in London, where she was editor of the school newspaper. Back in New Zealand, she started to write short stories but she grew tired of her life there. She returned to Europe in 1908 and went on to live in France, Italy, Germany and Switzerland. A restless soul who had many love affairs, her modernist writing was admired by her peers such as Leonard and Virginia Woolf, who published her story ‘Prelude’ on their Hogarth Press. In 1917 she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and she died in France aged only thirty-four.

Book preview

Chapter & Verse - Katherine Mansfield

Literature is a world of words and wonder, able to take us on almost unimaginable journeys from the wild and fantastic to the grind and minutiae of life.

An author’s ideas are his building blocks, his architecture of the mind, building a structure on which all else will rest; the narrative, the characters, the words - those few words that begin the adventure.

In this series we look at some of our leading classic authors across two genres: the short story and the poem.  In this modern world there is an insatiable need to categorise and pigeon-hole everyone and everything.  But ideas, these grains and saplings of the brain, need to roam, to explore and find their perfect literary use vehicle.  Our authors are masters of many literary forms, perhaps known for one but themselves favouring another.

Story. Poems. Story.  Within these boundaries come all manner of invention and cast of characters.  And, of course, each author has their own way of revealing their own chapter and verse.  

Katherine Mansfield - An Introduction

Katherine Mansfield was born on 14th October 1888 into a prominent family in Wellington, New Zealand, the third of five children.

A gifted Celloist, at one point she thought she might take it up professionally at the same time her early writing was published in school magazines.

At 19 Katherine left for home for England, there she met the modernist writers D H Lawrence and Virginia Woolf with whom she became close friends.

She travelled around Europe before returning to New Zealand in 1906 and to begin writing a series of the short stories that she would later become famous for. They often focus on moments of disruption and frequently open rather abruptly.

In contrast her poetry is often overlooked and indeed it comes from seemingly a rather different part of her literary brain.  Her observations and language can at times seem innocent, almost child-like.  But there are others which give a very different view, another layer to be ventured into and discovered.

By 1908 she had returned to London and to a rather more bohemian lifestyle. A passionate affair resulted in her becoming pregnant but married off instead to an older man who she left the same evening with the marriage unconsummated. She was then to miscarry and be cut out of her mother’s will, allegedly because of her lesbianism.

In 1911 she started a relationship with John Middleton Murry a magazine editor and, although it was volatile, it enabled her to write some of her best stories.

During the First World War Mansfield contracted extrapulmonary tuberculosis, which rendered any return or visit to New Zealand impossible.

Katherine Mansfield died at the age of only 34 on January 9th 1923 in Fontainebleau, France.

Index of Contents

Bliss

Sorrowing Love

Loneliness

A Little Boy's Dream

Fairy Tale

The Candle

Evening Song of the Thoughtful Child

The Wounded Bird

Covering Wings

In the Rangitaki Valley

The Town Between the Hills

Deaf House Agent

Camomile Tea

The Arabian Shawl

The Quarrel

The Garden Party

Bliss

Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at—nothing—at nothing, simply.

What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly, by a feeling of bliss—absolute bliss!—as though you’d suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe?…

Oh, is there no way you can express it without being drunk and disorderly? How idiotic civilization is! Why be given a