Early life
Mansfield was born
Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp, in 1888 into a socially prominent family in Wellington, New Zealand. The daughter of a banker and born to a middle-class colonial family, she was also a first cousin of author Countess Elizabeth von Arnim. Mansfield had two older sisters and a younger brother, born in 1894. Her father, Harold Beauchamp, went on to become the chairman of the Bank of New Zealand and was also knighted. The Mansfield family moved to Karori in 1893, where Mansfield would spend the happiest years of her childhood; she later used her memories of this time as an inspiration for the "Prelude" story.
Her first published stories appeared in the
High School Reporter and the Wellington Girls' High School magazine (the family returned to Wellington proper in 1898), in 1898 and 1899. She became enamoured with a cellist, Arnold Trowell (Mansfield herself was an accomplished cellist, having received lessons from Trowell's father), in 1902, although the feelings were largely unreciprocated. Mansfield wrote, in her journals, of feeling alienated to some extent in New Zealand, and, in general terms, of how she became disillusioned due to the repression of the M?ori people...who were often portrayed in a sympathetic or positive light in her later stories, such as
How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped.
She moved to London in 1903, where she attended Queen's College, along with her two sisters. Mansfield recommenced playing the cello, an occupation that she believed, during her time at Queen's, she would take up professionally, but she also began contributing to the school newspaper, with such a dedication to it that she eventually became editor during this period. She was particularly interested in the works of the French Symbolists and Oscar Wilde, and she was appreciated amongst peers for her vivacious and charismatic approach to life and work. She met fellow writer Ida Baker (also known as Lesley Moore), a South African, at the college, and the pair became lifelong friends. Mansfield did not become involved in much political activity when she lived in London; for example, she did not actively support the suffragette movement in the UK (women in New Zealand had gained the right to vote in 1893).
Mansfield first began journeying into continental Europe from 1903—1906, mainly to Belgium and Germany. After finishing her schooling in England, Mansfield returned to her New Zealand home in 1906, only then beginning to write short stories. She had several works published in the
Native Companion (Australia), which was her first paid writing work, and by this time she had her mind set on becoming a professional writer. It was also the first occasion on which she used the pseudonym 'K. Mansfield'. She rapidly wearied of the provincial New Zealand lifestyle, and of her family, during this time, and two years later headed again for London. Her father sent her an annual subsidy of £100 for the rest of her life. In later years, she would express both admiration and disdain for New Zealand in her journals, and she was never able to visit there again, partly due to her tuberculosis.
Mansfield had two lesbian relationships during this period, notable for their pre-eminence in her journal entries. Mansfield biographer Angela Smith has said that this is evidence of her "transgressive impetus", although Mansfield continued to have male lovers, and attempted to repress her feelings at certain times. Her first relationship was with Maata Mahupuku, a young M?ori woman whom Mansfield had first met in Wellington, and then again in London. In June 1907 she wrote: "I want Maata...I want her as I have had her...terribly. This is unclean I know but true." The second relationship, with Edith Kathleen Bendall, took place from 1906 to 1908, and Mansfield also professed her adoration for her in her journals.
Return to London
Back in London in 1908, Mansfield quickly fell into the bohemian way of life lived by many artists and writers of that era (although she only published one story and one poem during her first 15 months there). Mansfield sought out the Trowell family for companionship, and whilst Arnold was involved with another woman, Mansfield embarked on a passionate affair with his brother, Garnet. By early 1909 she had become pregnant with his child, though Trowell's parents disapproved of the relationship, and the two broke up. She hastily entered into a marriage, with a singing teacher 11 years her elder, George Bowden, on March 2, but left him the same evening, having failed to consummate the marriage. After a brief reunion with Garnet, Mansfield's mother, Annie Beauchamp, arrived in 1909. She blamed the breakdown of the marriage on a lesbian relationship between Mansfield and Ida Baker, and she quickly had her daughter despatched to a spa town, Bad Wörishofen, in Bavaria, Germany. Mansfield had miscarried the child after attempting to lift a suitcase on top of a cupboard, although it is not known whether her mother knew of this miscarriage when she left shortly after arriving in Germany (Mansfield was subsequently cut out of her mother's will).
Mansfield's time in Bavaria was to have a significant effect on her literary outlook. She was introduced to the works of Anton Chekhov, a writer who proved to have greater influence upon her writing in the short-term than Wilde, on whom she had been fixated during her earlier years. She returned to London in January 1910, and had over a dozen works published in A.R. Orage's
The New Age, a socialist magazine and highly-regarded intellectual publication. She became a friend and lover of Beatrice Hastings, who herself lived with Orage. Her experiences of Germany formed the foundation of her first published collection,
In a German Pension, in 1911, a work that was lauded by a number of critics (and enjoyed for its unfavourable portrayal of Germans) but that she later described as "immature". The most successful story from this work was
Frau Brechenmacher Attends a Wedding.
Meeting Murry
Although discouraged by the volume's relative lack of success, Mansfield submitted a lightweight story to a new avant-garde magazine called
Rhythm. The piece was rejected by the magazine's editor, John Middleton Murry, who requested something darker. Mansfield responded with
The Woman at the Store a tale of murder and mental illness. Mansfield was inspired in her writing by Fauvism, a contemporary art movement of the period, as well as Chekhov, although neither literary style would have a profound effect on her writing in the long-term (Fauvist literature has been described as 'savage').
Mansfield and Murray had begun, in 1911, a relationship that would culminate in their marriage in 1918. They led a troubled life during this time. In October 1912, the publisher of
Rhythm, Stephen Swift, absconded to Europe, and left Murry responsible for the debts the magazine had accumulated. Mansfield pledged her father's allowance towards the magazine, but it discontinued, being reorganized as
Blue Review in 1913, before folding again after three issues. Mansfield and Murry were persuaded by their friend Gilbert Cannan to rent a cottage next to his windmill in Cholesbury, Buckinghamshire in 1913, in an attempt to alleviate Mansfield of her ill health. It has been suggested that she was suffering from, amongst other things, gonorrhoea but there is no real evidence for this. In January 1914, they moved to Paris, with the hope that the change of setting would make writing for both of them easier. However, Mansfield only wrote one story during her time there (
Something Childish But Very Natural) before Murry was recalled to London to declare bankruptcy. Mansfield also left Murry twice from 1911—13, before returning. Mansfield had an affair in 1914, when she embarked on a brief relationship with French writer Francis Carco; her visiting him, in Paris in February 1915, was retold in one of her short stories,
An Indiscreet Journey.
Mansfield's life and work were changed forever by the 1915 death of her brother, Leslie Heron "Chummie" Beauchamp, a soldier fighting with New Zealand's troops in France in World War I. She was shocked and traumatized by the experience, so much so that her work began to take refuge in the nostalgic reminiscences of their childhood in New Zealand. In a poem, describing a dream she had shortly after his death, she wrote
By the remembered stream my brother standsWaiting for me with berries in his hands...'These are my body. Sister, take and eat.'
Despite this turbulence in Mansfield's life, she entered into her most productive period of writing in early 1916, and her relationship with Murry also improved. The couple had befriended D. H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda von Richthofen, in 1913, and maintained a strong relationship with them up until a falling out in 1916. However, Mansfield began to broaden her literary acquaintances for the remainder of the year, encountering Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Lytton Strachey, and Bertrand Russell through social gatherings and introductions from others.
At the beginning of 1917, Mansfield and Murry separated, although he continued to visit her at her new apartment. Ida Baker, whom Mansfield often called, with mixture of affection and disdain, her "wife", moved in with her shortly afterwards. Mansfield entered into her most prolific period of writing post-1916, which began with several stories, including
Mr Reginald Peacock's Day and
A Dill Pickle being published in
The New Age. Woolf and her husband, Leonard, who had recently set up Hogarth Press, approached her for a story, and Mansfield presented "Prelude", a story she had begun writing in 1915 as
The Aloe. The story is centred around a family of New Zealanders moving home, with little external plot. Although it failed to reach a wider audience, and was little noticed and criticized upon its release in 1918, it later became one of Mansfield's most celebrated works.
In December 1917, Mansfield became ill, and was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Rejecting the idea of a sanatorium on the basis that it would cut her off from writing, she took the only available option, which was to move abroad during the English winter. She moved to Bandol, France, but stayed at a half-deserted and cold hotel, where she became depressed. However, she continued to produce stories, including
Je ne parle pas français, one of her darker works (believed to have been inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky's
Notes from the Underground, it is a deeply personal work that casts Murry in negative light).
Bliss, the story which would lend its name to her second collection of stories in 1920, was also published in 1918. Her health continued to deteriorate though, and she had her first lung haemorrhage in March.
By April, Mansfield's divorce of Bowden was finalized, and she and Murry married, although they split two weeks later. They rejoined, and in March 1919, Murry became editor of Athenaeum, a prestigious weekly journal. Mansfield wrote over 100 reviews for the magazine, and they were published as a collection, posthumously, in
Novels and Novelists by Murry. For the winter of 1918—19, she and Baker stayed in a villa in San Remo, Italy. Their relationship came under strain during this period, and after writing to Murry to express her feelings of depression, he stayed over Christmas. Although her relationship with Murry became increasingly distant after 1918, and the two often lived apart, this intervention of his was able to spur her on, and she wrote
The Man Without a Temperament, the story of an ill wife and her long suffering husband. Biographer Joanna Woods has said that this work signalled a turning point for Mansfield, when she was able to display a "new objectivity that gives the story a universal dimension".
"Miss Brill," the bittersweet story of a fragile woman living an ephemeral life of observation and simple pleasures in Paris, established Mansfield as one of the preeminent writers of the Modernist period, upon its publication in 1920's
Bliss. The title story from that collection, "Bliss", which involved a similar character facing her husband's infidelity, also found critical acclaim. She followed with the equally praised collection,
The Garden Party, published in 1922.
