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
I really only have Perfect Fun with myself. Other people won’t stop and look at the things I want to look at or, if they do, they stop to please me or to humor me or to keep the peace.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Solitude
But what Kezia liked more than anything, what she liked frightfully, was the lamp. It stood in the middle of the dining-room table, an exquisite little amber lamp with a white globe. It was filled all ready for lighting, though, of course, you couldn’t light it. But there was something inside that looked like oil and moved when you shook it.
The father and mother dolls, who sprawled very stiff as though they had fainted in the drawing-room, and their two little children asleep upstairs, were really too big for the doll’s house. They didn’t look as though they belonged. But the lamp was perfect. It seemed to smile at Kezia, to say, ‘I live here.’ The lamp was real.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Beauty
To work—to work! It is such infinite delight to know that we still have the best things to do.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Work
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.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Loneliness
The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody’s fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Mind
Life never becomes a habit to me. It’s always a marvel.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Life, Living
I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Self-Knowledge, Excellence, Doing Your Best, Identity
Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become love. That is the mystery.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Pain, Suffering, Acceptance, Change
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
The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Reading, Literature, Friendship, Books
To learn, to desire, to know, to feel, to think, to act. That is what I want. And nothing less.
—Katherine Mansfield
I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Friends, Candor, Friendship
Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can’t build on it; it’s only good for wallowing in.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Repentance, Regret, The Present, Disappointment, Moving on, Remorse
The more you are motivated by love, the more fearless and free your actions will be.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Love, Fear
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: Commitment, Resolve, Goals, Perseverance, Aspirations, Endurance, Dedication, Motivation
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
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: Risk-taking, Truth, Opinions, Courage, Risk
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
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: Optimism, Perception, Life, Positive Attitudes, Attitude, Living
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, Friends, Feelings
If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools.
—Katherine Mansfield
Topics: Love
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