52 Facts About Katherine Mansfield

Kathleen Mansfield Murry was a New Zealand writer, essayist and journalist, widely considered one of the most influential and important authors of the modernist movement.

Katherine Mansfield's works are celebrated across the world, and have been published in 25 languages.

The Beauchamp girls later switched to the elite Fitzherbert Terrace School, where Katherine Mansfield became friends with Maata Mahupuku, who became a muse for early work and with whom she is believed to have had a passionate relationship.

Katherine Mansfield was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis in 1917, and she died in France aged 34.

Kathleen Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp was born in 1888 into a socially prominent Wellington family in Thorndon.

Katherine Mansfield's mother was Annie Burnell Beauchamp, whose brother married the daughter of Richard Seddon.

Katherine Mansfield's extended family included the author Countess Elizabeth von Arnim, and her great-granduncle was Victorian artist Charles Robert Leslie.

Katherine Mansfield had two elder sisters, a younger sister and a younger brother.

In 1893, for health reasons, the Beauchamp family moved from Thorndon to the country suburb of Karori, where Katherine Mansfield spent the happiest years of her childhood.

Katherine Mansfield used some of those memories as an inspiration for the short story "Prelude".

Katherine Mansfield's first printed stories appeared in the High School Reporter and the Wellington Girls' High School magazine in 1898 and 1899.

Katherine Mansfield wrote in her journals of feeling alienated in New Zealand, and of how she had become disillusioned because of the repression of the Maori people.

In 1902 Katherine Mansfield became enamoured of Arnold Trowell, a cellist, but her feelings were for the most part not reciprocated.

Katherine Mansfield was herself an accomplished cellist, having received lessons from Trowell's father.

Katherine Mansfield moved to London in 1903, where she attended Queen's College with her sisters.

Katherine Mansfield recommenced playing the cello, an occupation that she believed she would take up professionally, but she began contributing to the college newspaper with such dedication that she eventually became its editor.

Katherine Mansfield was particularly interested in the works of the French Symbolists and Oscar Wilde, and she was appreciated among her peers for her vivacious, charismatic approach to life and work.

Katherine Mansfield met fellow student Ida Baker at the college, and they became lifelong friends.

Katherine Mansfield travelled in Continental Europe between 1903 and 1906, staying mainly in Belgium and Germany.

Katherine Mansfield had several works published in the Native Companion, her first paid writing work, and by this time she had her heart set on becoming a professional writer.

Katherine Mansfield rapidly grew weary of the provincial New Zealand lifestyle and of her family, and two years later, headed back to London.

Katherine Mansfield's father sent her an annual allowance of 100 pounds for the rest of her life.

Katherine Mansfield had two romantic relationships with women that are notable for their prominence in her journal entries.

Katherine Mansfield continued to have male lovers and attempted to repress her feelings at certain times.

Katherine Mansfield published one story and one poem during her first 15 months there.

Katherine Mansfield sought out the Trowell family for companionship, and while Arnold was involved with another woman, Katherine Mansfield embarked on a passionate affair with his brother Garnet.

Katherine Mansfield blamed the breakdown of the marriage to Bowden on a lesbian relationship between Mansfield and Baker, and she quickly had her daughter dispatched to the spa town of Bad Worishofen in Bavaria, where Mansfield miscarried.

Katherine Mansfield then published more than a dozen articles in Alfred Richard Orage's socialist magazine The New Age and became a friend and lover of Beatrice Hastings, who lived with Orage.

In 1910, Katherine Mansfield submitted a lightweight story to Rhythm, a new avant-garde magazine.

Katherine Mansfield responded with a tale of murder and mental illness titled "The Woman at the Store".

Katherine Mansfield pledged her father's allowance toward the magazine, but it was discontinued, being reorganised as The Blue Review in 1913 and folding after three issues.

Katherine Mansfield wrote only one story during her time there, "Something Childish But Very Natural", then Murry was recalled to London to declare bankruptcy.

Katherine Mansfield had a brief affair with the French writer Francis Carco in 1914.

Katherine Mansfield's visit to him in Paris in February 1915 is retold in her story "An Indiscreet Journey".

Katherine Mansfield began to take refuge in nostalgic reminiscences of their childhood in New Zealand.

Ida Baker, whom Katherine Mansfield often called, with a mixture of affection and disdain, her "wife", moved in with her shortly afterwards.

Katherine Mansfield entered into her most prolific period of writing after 1916, which began with several stories, including "Mr Reginald Peacock's Day" and "A Dill Pickle", being published in The New Age.

Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard, who had recently set up the Hogarth Press, approached her for a story, and Katherine Mansfield presented to them "Prelude", which she had begun writing in 1915 as "The Aloe".

In December 1917, at the age of 29, Katherine Mansfield was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis.

The Portrait of Katherine Mansfield is held by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

Katherine Mansfield stayed at a half-deserted, cold hotel in Bandol, France, where she became depressed but continued to produce stories, including "Je ne parle pas francais".

Katherine Mansfield followed Bliss, her first collection of short stories, with the collection The Garden Party and Other Stories, published in 1922.

In May 1921, Katherine Mansfield, accompanied by her friend Ida Baker, travelled to Switzerland to investigate the tuberculosis treatment of the Swiss bacteriologist Henri Spahlinge.

Katherine Mansfield spent her last years seeking increasingly unorthodox cures for her tuberculosis.

Katherine Mansfield finished "The Canary", the last short story she completed, on 7 July 1922.

Katherine Mansfield wrote her will at the hotel on 14 August 1922.

Katherine Mansfield suffered a fatal pulmonary haemorrhage on 9 January 1923, after running up a flight of stairs.

Katherine Mansfield died within the hour, and was buried at Cimetiere d'Avon, Avon, near Fontainebleau.

Katherine Mansfield was a prolific writer in the final years of her life.

Katherine Mansfield has been honoured at Karori Normal School in Wellington, which has a stone monument dedicated to her with a plaque commemorating her work and her time at the school, and at Samuel Marsden Collegiate School with a painting, and an award in her name.

Mansfield was the subject of a 1973 BBC miniseries A Picture of Katherine Mansfield, starring Vanessa Redgrave.

Archives of Katherine Mansfield material are held in the Turnbull Collection of the National Library of New Zealand in Wellington, with other important holdings at the Newberry Library in Chicago, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin and the British Library in London.