2. About the author

Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp was born on \(14\) October \(1888\) in New Zealand. She was a very famous short story writer and a poet. She was brought up in a colonial New Zealand, which meant that the country was under the control of the British. At the age of \(19\), she moved from New Zealand to London. It was in London that she realised her passion and talent for writing.

 

She got acquainted with the best of the writer in Britain, such as D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. They formed a group called "Bloomsbury group", which was just a group of people from Cambridge University and King's College for Women, who came together to discuss their literary thoughts. They met at a place called Bloomsbury and talked about poetry, novels and criticism. Mansfield was deeply influenced by this group. She wrote when Modernism was at its peak in London. Modernism emerged in Europe and North America during the late \(19th\) and early \(20th\) century. It was a movement when artists wanted to break away from the existing traditional ways of expressing art. Their motto was "Make it new". They made paintings that were harsh, new, and different from the already existing ones.

 

Mansfield mostly wrote about family life in New Zealand and the hardships, love and bond associated with family. Her short stories were warm and made one ponder about human attachments. They mostly revolved around the inequality in the society and how it affects the masses. She wrote under the name Katherine Mansfield. She wrote excessively during the first World War. She lost her brother Leslie to the war, which shattered her. She wrote her first short story for a magazine called 'Rhythm'. It was rejected initially, but she worked on it, only to become one of the best short story writer.

 

Famous works: