Katherine Mansfield
Overview
Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp Murry (14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield left for Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

 in 1908 where she encountered Modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....

 with whom she became close friends. Her stories often focus on moments of disruption and frequently open rather abruptly.
Quotations

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 (24 April 1906), from The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield (1984-1996), vol. I

To acknowledge the presence of fear is to give birth to failure.

Journal entry, "Reading Notes" (1905-1907), quoted in Ruth Elvish Mantz and John Middleton Murry|John Middleton Murry, The Life of Katherine Mansfield (1933), p. 212

To work — to work! It is such infinite delight to know that we still have the best things to do.

Letter to Bertrand Russell (7 December 1916), from The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, vol. I

It's a terrible thing to be alone — yes it is — it is — but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath — as terrible as you like — but a mask.

Letter to her future husband, John Middleton Murry (July 1917), from The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, vol. I

I'm a writer first & a woman after.

Letter to John Middleton Murry (3 December 1920), from The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, vol. IV

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become Love. This is the mystery. This is what I must do.

Journal entry (19 December 1920), published in The Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927) edited by J. Middleton Murry

It's an infernal nuisance to love Life as I do. I seem to love it more as time goes on rather than less. It never becomes a habit to me. It's always a marvel. I do hope I'll be able to keep in it long enough to do some really good work. I'm sick of people dying who promise well.

Letter to Anne Estelle Rice (21 May 1921)), from The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, vol. IV

Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order. This is what life has taught me.

Journal entry (29 January 1922), published in The Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927)

 
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