Selected Stories
KATHERINE MANSFIELD was born in Wellington in 1888 and left for London in 1903 to finish her schooling. After travelling in Europe she returned to New Zealand in 1906 and started writing stories, some of which were published in Australia. Two years later, intent on becoming a professional writer, she again went to London.
Mansfield began submitting stories to literary magazines, notably the New Age. A series of failed relationships, including an unconsummated marriage to the singing teacher George Bowden, did not slow her output. The collection In a German Pension was published in 1911.
That year Mansfield commenced the turbulent relationship with the writer John Middleton Murry that would last until her death. Their circle of friends included D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf.
Mansfield was shocked by her brother’s death in World War I, and in 1917 she contracted tuberculosis. The subsequent years were nevertheless productive, leading to the acclaimed collections Bliss and The Garden Party.
She spent her last years seeking cures for her tuberculosis. In October 1922 she moved to France for treatment but died the following January, aged thirty-four.
With Mansfield’s reputation on the ascent Murry began editing her unpublished works, resulting in two volumes of stories, as well as collections of poetry, criticism, letters and journals.
EMILY PERKINS is the author of four novels, including Novel About My Wife, and a collection of short stories, Not Her Real Name. She teaches creative writing at the University of Auckland. Her latest book is The Forrests.
ALSO BY KATHERINE MANSFIELD
Fiction
In a German Pension
Bliss and Other Stories
The Garden Party and Other Stories
The Doves’ Nest and Other Stories
Something Childish and Other Stories
Non-fiction
Novels and Novelists
The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield
The Notebooks of Katherine Mansfield
The Journal of Katherine Mansfield
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This edition published by The Text Publishing Company 2012
‘The Luft Bad’ and ‘A Birthday’ first published in In a German Pension (1911); ‘Je ne parle pas français’, ‘Bliss’, ‘Psychology’, ‘Pictures’, ‘Mr. Reginald Peacock’s Day’, ‘A Dill Pickle’, ‘The Little Governess’ and ‘The Escape’ first published in Bliss and Other Stories (1921); ‘At the Bay’, ‘The Garden Party’, ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Dove’, ‘The Life of Ma Parker’, ‘Marriage à la Mode’, ‘Miss Brill’, ‘Her First Ball’, ‘An Ideal Family’ and ‘The Lady’s Maid’ first published in The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922); ‘The Doll’s House’ and ‘The Fly’ first published in The Doves’ Nest and Other Stories (1923); ‘The Tiredness of Rosabel’ first published in Something Childish and Other Stories (1924)
Cover design by WH Chong
Page design by Text
eBook production by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Primary print ISBN: 9781922079503
Ebook ISBN: 9781921961786
Author: Mansfield, Katherine, 1888–1923
Title: Selected stories / by Katherine Mansfield ; introduction by Emily Perkins.
Series: Text classics
Dewey Number: NZ823.2
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Hiding in Plain Sight
by Emily Perkins
Selected Stories
At the Bay
The Lady’s Maid
Mr. and Mrs. Dove
The Garden Party
Marriage à la Mode
The Daughters of the Late Colonel
The Life of Ma Parker
Bliss
The Fly
The Doll’s House
Her First Ball
An Ideal Family
The Escape
The Little Governess
Pictures
Mr. Reginald Peacock’s Day
The Luft Bad
Miss Brill
A Birthday
Je ne parle pas français 329
Psychology
A Dill Pickle
The Tiredness of Rosabel
MAYBE my favourite Katherine Mansfield character is Miss Ada Moss in ‘Pictures’, the singer past her prime caught on the knife-edge of dignity. (It’s a mark of her desperation that when she can no longer get employed as a contralto she chases work as...an actor.) She is a mystery to herself, as we all are, and Mansfield is never better than when she breaks with the sympathetic close narration at which she was a genius to give a little shock of unpremeditated behaviour. Her characters find themselves—in both senses of the phrase—doing things. Survival is our most powerful urge, and even Mansfield’s deluded creations, like the Little Governess whose every misstep makes the reader wince in anticipation of dramatic irony, are driven by it.
But we’re not really drawn to characters; we’re drawn to the voices that make them. When I first read Mansfield I also fell for Bertha, the unknowing wife in ‘Bliss’ positively melting with the luminous beauty of everything around her, the discovery of desire. And the thwarted, crushed ego of the former lover in ‘A Dill Pickle’. And Kezia, and Our Else, and the amoral narrator of ‘Je ne parle pas français’—not for the special brand of unctuousness he reserves for himself, but for ‘his’ first five pages, the scene setting in the tawdry café, the fragmenting of a person into a piece of writing so that perception appears to split apart and come together, forming a quilted world, the seams still showing.
It’s daring, leaving those seams, letting the threads split so we might be looking through at a strange ground, the author behind the page. And it’s evilly funny. The narrator thinks of a phrase, decides to make a note of it, casts around for a writing pad: ‘No paper or envelopes, of course. Only a morsel of pink blotting paper, incredibly soft and limp and almost moist, like the tongue of a little dead kitten, which I’ve never felt.’
We shouldn’t require writing to feel contemporary to be able to love it, but doesn’t that line, blotting paper aside, carry a tang of the present? In her short life Mansfield saw the explosion of modernism, the corrosive war. But her stories bridge the gap. ‘Risk anything!’ she challenges across time. ‘Care no more for the opinion of others...Act for yourself. Face the truth.’ Truth, as we perhaps understand it now, is the business of moments.
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