Katherine Mansfield
Critique • Works • Views and quotes
Born
Wellington, New Zealand, 1888
Died
Fontainebleau, France, 1923
Nationality
New Zealander
Publications
Stories, story collections
Writing languages
English
Literature
• The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922)
Stories
• "Prelude" (1918)
• "The Daughters of the Late Colonel" (1921)
• "The Fly" (1922)
• "The Doll's House" (1922)
• "The Garden Party" (1922)
Story Collections
• The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922)
On books, writers and writing
Would you not like to try all sorts of lives—one is so very small—but that is the satisfaction of writing—one can impersonate so many people.
Letter to Sylvia Payne, 1906
My God I love to think of you, Virginia, as my friend. Don't cry me an ardent creature or say, with your head a little on one side, smiling as though you knew some enchanting secret: "Well Katherine, we shall see"… But pray consider how rare it is to find some one with the same passion for writing that you have, who desires to be scrupulously truthful with you—and to give you the freedom of the city without any reserves at all.
Letter to Virginia Woolf, 1917
The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.
Letter to Ottoline Morrell, 1922
I want so to live that I work with my hands and my feeling and my brain. I want a garden, a small house, grass, animals, books, pictures, music. And out of this, the expression of this, I want to be writing (Though I may write about cabmen. That's no matter.) But warm, eager, living life — to be rooted in life — to learn, to desire, to feel, to think, to act. This is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for.
Journal entry, 1922
