A brief life, but long legacy of modernist writer
For my birthday, a kind friend gave me a voucher for any book from Persephone Books. This is a brilliant book shop/publisher which, and I’m quoting now from their website, “reprints neglected fiction and non-fiction, mostly by women writers and mostly mid-twentieth century. All of our 143 books are intelligent, thought-provoking and beautifully written and are chosen to appeal to busy people wanting titles that are neither too literary nor too commercial.”
I was given a list of books available, but I already knew what I wanted. I already have a few excellent Persephone Books titles, and was pleased to see a book I’ve been wanting for some time was available: Journal of Katherine Mansfield.
I’ve been a fan of Mansfield’s work for some time and I like to read diaries of writers to see what they were thinking about while writing.
Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp was born in 1888 into a socially prominent Wellington family in Thorndon, New Zealand. She disliked some elements of New Zealand life in those times. The conservatism and repressive attitudes towards the Maori population. She changed her name to Katherine Mansfield for her writing work and moved to England, first for her education and later to be part of the more progressive European culture in…
