With the exception of the first four stories, all were written within a period of ten years. These stories, and the letters following, reflect the urgency of a writer who knew her time was limited. All but four of the texts of the stories reprinted here are versions that Mansfield herself revised or selected.

Twenty excerpts from Mansfield's correspondence address the craft of writing and her own views on her work, subjects rarely broached in her many letters.

"Criticism" includes eighteen essays that collectively suggest the changing emphases in how Mansfield has been read by critics. Contributors include fellow writers Rebecca West, T. S. Eliot, Katherine Anne Porter, V. S. Pritchett, Elizabeth Bowen, and Frank O' Connor, as well as biographers Claire Tomalin and Vincent O'Sullivan, among others.

A Selected Bibliography is also included.

About the Author
Katherine Mansfield developed quickly as a writer, and from 1918 until a few months before her death in February 1923, she wrote with the urgency of a woman who knew the time available to her was limited. Almost all of Mansfield's stories first appeared in magazines and periodicals, before either she, or after her death her husband, the critic John Middleton Murry, arranged them in collections. Vincent O'Sullivan is Professor of English Emeritus at Victoria University of Wellington as well as a novelist, poet, and biographer. He is the editor of The Oxford Book of New Zealand Poetry, The Oxford Book of New Zealand Stories, The Selected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, and, with Margaret Scott, the five-volume edition of The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield.


Book Information
ISBN 9780393925333
Author Katherine Mansfield
Format Paperback
Page Count 544
Imprint WW Norton & Co
Publisher WW Norton & Co
Weight(grams) 416g
Dimensions(mm) 213mm * 130mm * 23mm