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'I was jealous of her writing. The only writing I have ever been jealous of.' Virginia Woolf Virginia Woolf was not the only writer to admire Mansfield's work: Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, and Elizabeth Bowen all praised her stories, and her early death at the age of thirty-four cut short one of the finest short-story writers in the English language. This selection covers the full range of Mansfield's fiction, from her early satirical stories to the subtly nuanced comedy of 'The Daughters of the Late Colonel' and the macabre and ominous 'A Married Man's Story'. The stories that pay what Mansfield calls 'a debt of love' to New Zealand are as sharply etched as the European stories, and she recreates her childhood world with mordant insight. Disruption is a constant theme, whether the tone is comic, tragic, nostalgic, or domestic, echoing Mansfield's disrupted life and the fractured expressions of Modernism. This new edition increases the selection from 27 to 33 stories and prints them in the order in which they first appeared, in the definitive texts established by Anthony Alpers.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Katherine Mansfield's quietly devastating prose and absolute commitment to craft remain two of the most potent twentieth century contributions to the difficult genre of the short story. This well-chosen selection demonstrates why.
Rich in colour, atmosphere and poetry, these tales most frequently turn on questions of loss and self-realization. Mansfield often takes as her subjects the resonant emptiness of lives framed by the tightest of parameters - a lonely woman's complete attachment and identification with her canary, a man's dependence on the memory of his dead son - and times where cherished certainties fall away in moments of revelation.
Perhaps the most famous of the latter type is 'Bliss' where the abrupt emptying of juvenile hostess Bertha Mason's boundless, yet ultimately restricting, exhiliration comes as an ambiguous opportunity for both delayed misery and growth. Elsewhere, tiny phrases in conversation unravel inescapable disparities in relationships; the complex emotional tensions of Mansfield's characters lie, as in Chekhov, primarily beneath the glittering surface of her clipped and confident style.
Intricately crafted, the nuanced dimensions of these stories haunt the reader, echoing in your mind long after you've put the book down. I find them compulsively re-readable.
This selection contains all of Mansfield's most famous tales including 'Bliss', 'The Canary', 'The Fly', 'The Daughters of the Late Colonel', 'A Dill Pickle', 'A Cup of Tea' and a recently available, unedited version of 'Je Ne Parle Pas Francais' which restores the full depth of its narrator's deliciously depraved senses of self and sensuality. A must-read.
Rich in colour, atmosphere and poetry, these tales most frequently turn on questions of loss and self-realization. Mansfield often takes as her subjects the resonant emptiness of lives framed by the tightest of parameters - a lonely woman's complete attachment and identification with her canary, a man's dependence on the memory of his dead son - and times where cherished certainties fall away in moments of revelation.
Perhaps the most famous of the latter type is 'Bliss' where the abrupt emptying of juvenile hostess Bertha Mason's boundless, yet ultimately restricting, exhiliration comes as an ambiguous opportunity for both delayed misery and growth. Elsewhere, tiny phrases in conversation unravel inescapable disparities in relationships; the complex emotional tensions of Mansfield's characters lie, as in Chekhov, primarily beneath the glittering surface of her clipped and confident style.
Intricately crafted, the nuanced dimensions of these stories haunt the reader, echoing in your mind long after you've put the book down. I find them compulsively re-readable.
This selection contains all of Mansfield's most famous tales including 'Bliss', 'The Canary', 'The Fly', 'The Daughters of the Late Colonel', 'A Dill Pickle', 'A Cup of Tea' and a recently available, unedited version of 'Je Ne Parle Pas Francais' which restores the full depth of its narrator's deliciously depraved senses of self and sensuality. A must-read.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
K Mansfield is an author that I really love and admire. I studied her writings at university, and rediscovered her "Selected Stories" recently with great pleasure and awe. Her style is fantastic ; her short stories focus on the characters' inner states and her depiction of human psychology is so accurate, rich and subtle. My favourites stories are Bliss, Prelude, At the Bay, the Garden Party, Mr and Mrs Dove,... The poignant "Life of Ma Parker" as well as the human cruelty depicted in "Ms Brill" will make your heart bleed. An author highly recommended.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
With her abundant usage of simile and metaphor, her sensibility and her presentation of the senses, colour, shape and aesthetic and moral perception, the indescribable style of Katherine Mansfield is present within this collection of short stories. Taken from Bliss (1920), The Garden Party (1922), The Dove's Nest (1923) and Something Childish (1924), these stories are set in many places and at many times, being linked together by Mansfield's delight in beauty and the essence of life, and her slight disgust at the crude and the ugly. Mansfield's ability to create such acute pictures within the reader's mind, to veritably sweep the reader into the narrative with her descriptive language, can only be achieved through her masterful skill of crafting language. This collection is wonderful - if you have ever felt slightly disconnected from the world around you, that you have thoughts which others do not, then this collection is for you - relish the similies, melt into the metaphors and let Mansfield take you on her magic carpet ride.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Brilliantly written stories of alienation, loss, and emptiness
These stories are exquisitely written. Each is emotionally powerful. They are evocative, with almost impressionist, lifelike depictions of people and places. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Samuel J. Parkinson
fantastic read!
Each story draws you in from the moment you read the first few words. Individually unique and compelling. Lyrically beautiful, some made me laugh and cry! Read more
Published 8 months ago by claire
enigmatic
A wonderful collection of whitty enigmatic stories. Perfect for a sunny afternoon with a cup of tea and a biscuit. The book was in excellent condition and promptly received.
Published 8 months ago by wendy
love her
Katherine Mansfield is a BRILLIANT writer. I love that the reader gets nothing given to them on a plate, she makes you work to find the meaning in her descriptions of a person's... Read more
Published 19 months ago by wilhemina
Intriguing and beautiful
I am new to Mansfield's work (shameful, I know) and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed her short stories. Read more
Published on 16 Nov 2007 by H Pedder
Good
I enjoyed her style, her vocabulary and such plot lines as in the two strangers with an odd childish relationship in "Something childish but very natural" and one woman's... Read more
Published on 19 Sep 2001 by esmeweatherwa50@hotmail.com
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