Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp (1888–1923,) who wrote under the pseudonym Katherine Mansfield, was a New Zealand-born British short-story writer. Before her premature death from tuberculosis, Mansfield became the master of the short-story form. Her tales range from extended impressionistic evocations of family life to short sketches.
Born in Wellington, she was educated at Queen’s College, London. She returned briefly to New Zealand to study music, then came back to London to pursue a literary career. Until 1914, she published stories in Rhythm and The Blue Review, edited by the critic and essayist John Middleton Murry, whom she married in 1918.
Mansfield is noted for her short stories that focus on psychological conflicts and feature themes related to women’s lives and social hierarchies. Mansfield first achieved recognition with the story collections Bliss (1920) and The Garden Party (1922.)
Posthumous collections include The Dove’s Nest (1923) and Something Childish and Other Stories (1924; also The little Girl and Other Stories, 1924,) the compilation of critical essays Novels and Novelists (1930,) and Poems of Katherine Mansfield (1988.) Her work for the theatre was collected in Katherine Mansfield: Dramatic Sketches (1988.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Katherine Mansfield
Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Truth, Risk-taking, Courage, Risk
I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Doing Your Best, Excellence, Self-Knowledge
Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Writing
When we can begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Failures, Mistakes, Failure
To learn, to desire, to know, to feel, to think, to act. That is what I want. And nothing less.
—Katherine Mansfield
We can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough. But the tremendous effort needed – one doesn’t always want to make it – does one? … But what else can be done? What’s the alternative? What do you want most to do? That’s what I have to keep asking myself, in the face of difficulties.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Perseverance, Commitment, Motivation, Resolve, Endurance, Goals, Aspirations, Dedication
The more you are motivated by love, the more fearless and free your actions will be.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Fear, Love
There are in life as many aspects as attitudes towards it; and aspects change with attitudes… Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. Life would undergo a change of appearance because we ourselves had undergone a change in attitude.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Life, Perception, Positive Attitudes, Living, Optimism, Attitude
Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become love. That is the mystery.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Acceptance, Suffering, Change
I am treating you as my friend, asking you to share my present minuses in the hope I can ask you to share my future pluses.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Friendship, Feelings
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.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Authors & Writing, Fiction
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