Wild Places

Predating Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, Mansfield’s late stories…transformed the short story genre by casting a fleeting, impressionist glance at the ordinary details of domestic existence * Paris Review *Her economy, the boldness of her comic gift, her speed, her dramatic changes of the point of interest, her power to dissolve and reassemble a character and situation by a few lines – V S Pritchett, 1946 * New Statesman *‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’…perhaps her greatest achievement, describes two spinsters whose overbearing father has just died. It flickers between comedy, menace, outlandish interludes and engulfing sorrow with consummate skill * Guardian *She was not a kind or gentle writer. [‘The Doll’s House’] could be sentimental in the hands of a lesser writer, but she knew better than that. She spares nobody – Margaret Drabble * Guardian *There is something rapturous about her work: through her acute eye and cool, appraising descriptions, she has the power to distil the apparently inconsequential into frozen moments laden with significance * Guardian *This wide-ranging collection of her [Mansfield’s] short stories is a vivid reminder of what a brave and innovative write she was… Glittering gems – read one every day * Daily Mail *

Katherine Mansfield was born in New Zealand in 1888. She spent most of her adult life in Europe where she became a pioneer of the modernist movement along with James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence. Her short stories influenced many contemporaries and were instrumental in the development of the form.

Mansfield’s personal life was highly unconventional including love affairs with both men and women, intense friendships and travel. The last five years of her life were overshadowed by tuberculosis though she produced some of her best work during this time including the publication of the collections Bliss and Other Stories (1920) and The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922). She died in France in 1923 at the age of just 34.