- Born
- 14 October 1888Wellington, New Zealand
- Died
- 9 January 1923Fontainebleau, France · aged 34
Katherine Mansfield
New Zealand’s great short-story writer loved both women and men, and changed the modern short story before dying at 34.
Katherine Mansfield was born Kathleen Beauchamp in Wellington, the daughter of a wealthy banker. As a schoolgirl she fell passionately in love with Maata Mahupuku, a young Māori woman, and her early diaries describe her desire for women. At 19 she left New Zealand for London to become a writer.
In London she lived a restless life. Her lifelong companion was her school friend Ida Baker, who devoted her life to Mansfield. Mansfield married twice; her second husband was the critic John Middleton Murry. She was friends with D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, who said Mansfield’s writing was the only writing she had ever been jealous of.
Her stories, such as “Prelude”, “Bliss” and “The Garden Party”, broke with traditional plot: they capture moments, moods and the inner lives of her characters. Several of them, among them “Bliss”, contain hidden desire between women. She is regarded as one of the founders of the modern short story.
In 1917 she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She spent her last years searching for a cure in France and Switzerland, and died near Fontainebleau in 1923, aged 34.