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1888Kathleen Mansfield Beauchampborn 14␣ October in Wellingtoninto an aspiring middle-classfamily.
1898First published work in theWellington High SchoolReporter.
1903–05Attends Queens College,London to study French,German and music. Develops afriendship with Ida Bakerwhich her mother disapprovesof. Story and a sketchpublished in school magazine.
1906–07Returns to Wellington. Adopts the pen-name K.␣ Mansfield.
1908Returns to London to pursue a career in the arts. Becomespregnant to a musician, but he ends the relationship.
1909Marries a singing teacher but leaves him almostimmediately. Taken to Germany by her mother where shemiscarries. Affair with Polish writer Floryan Sobieniowskiwho later tries to blackmail her with her letters.
1910–11Poem and satirical stories published in New Age in England.Collected New Age stories published as In a German Pension.Meets John Middleton Murry, founder/editor of Rhythm.
1912–14Various stories published, including‘The Woman at the Store’ depictinglife in NZ. Rhythm folds. Mansfield andMurry attempt to set up as writers inParis. They jointly edit the Blue Review,which also folds. Murry declaredbankrupt. Start of World War I.
1915Visits France; brief affair with novelist,Francis Carco, which is later describedin ‘An Indiscreet Journey’. Begins astory about her childhood called ‘TheAloe’. Brother Leslie killed in France.
1917Asked for a story from Virginia Woolf, reshapes ‘The Aloe’and renames it ‘Prelude’. Diagnosed with tuberculosis anddivides her time between London and the south of France.
They cannot walk fast enough. Their heads bent, their legs just touching, theystride like one eager person through the town, down the asphalt zigzag wherethe fennel grows wild and on to the esplanade …The wind is so strong thatthey have to fight their way through it, rocking like two old drunkards.This text from ‘The Wind Blows’, which mentions the Thorndon Quay zigzag,is on a plaque on the Wellington Writers Walk, next to Te Papa.Ben Steele
Below: But we can’t possibly have a garden party with a man dead just outsidethe front gate. ~‘The Garden Party’. The large house (left of centre) on TinakoriRoad, once owned by Sir Harold Beauchamp, is the setting for this story. Thephoto also shows the 1893 flood in Saunders Lane, Wellington (now LittleGeorge St) and the workers’ cottages: “They were the greatest possibleeyesore and they had no right to be in that neighbourhood at all. They werelittle mean dwellings painted a chocolate brown.”Alexander Turnbull Library F1348 1/2 MNZ
Poem to Stanislaw WyspianskiFrom the other side of the world,From a little island cradled in the giant sea bosom,From a little land with no history,(Making its own history, slowly and clumsilyPiecing together this and that, finding the pattern, solving
the problem,Like a child with a box of bricks),I, a woman, with the taint of the pioneer in my blood,Full of a youthful strength that wars with itself and is lawless,I sing your praises, magnificent warrior; I proclaim your
triumphal battle.…
At the Villa Isola Bella at Menton in the south of France, 1920.Photo by Ida Baker. Alexander Turnbull Library F11917 1/2
Below: Group at Te Whaiti in the Urewera district, 1907. KM standingsecond from left. “The more I see of life the more certain I feel that it’sthe people who live remote from cities who inherit the earth.”18 March 1922 – to her father Harold Beauchamp.Alexander Turnbull Library F2584 1/2
Above: Theentrance toLe Prieure desBasses Loges,Avon,Fontainebleau,Paris, whereKatherineMansfield died.Alexander Turnbull LibraryF16021 1/4
Left: A room inthe KatherineMansfieldBirthplace,Wellington.Katherine MansfieldBirthplace Society
At Villa Isola Bella at Menton in the south of France, 1920.Photo by KM’s close friend Ida Baker. Alexander Turnbull Library F11916 1/2
Below: Katherine Mansfield’s birthplace in Wellington,which is now a museum focusing on her life and work.Circa 1900: Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Society
Risk! Risk anything!Care no more for theopinions of others, forthose voices. Do thehardest thing on earthfor you. Act for yourself.Face the truth. Journal of Katherine Mansfield
To be alive, and to bea ‘writer’ is enough.Notebook 1917
There is no twilight in our New Zealand days,but a curious half-hour when everythingappears grotesque – it frightens – as thoughthe savage spirit of the country walked abroadand sneered at what it saw.‘The Woman at the Store’ 1912
Thank God I was bornin New Zealand. Ayoung country is a realheritage, though it takesone time to recognise it.Letter to her father, 1922
To have the courage of yourexcess – to find the limit of yourself.On human limits, 1907, from KM’s Journal.
Portrait by Anne Estelle Rice, 1918.Te Papa Wellington New Zealand I.006291
Manuscript page from Notebook 1.Alexander Turnbull Library qMS-1242
in association with Steele Roberts Publishers,Box 9321 Wellington: [email protected]
with the support of
This poster is one of a serieson New Zealand writers produced by
The Beauchamp family, circa 1898.Alexander Turnbull Library F61986 1/2
Drawing by Ida S Rintoul, Alexander Turnbull Library F49746 1/2
1918More stories published, based on her childhood andsatirical portrayal of her well-to-do social set. MarriesMurry. Writes reviews for the Athenaeum.
1920Separation because of ill-health sparks emotional letters toMurry. Rents Villa Isola Bella in Menton. Publishes secondcollection, Bliss and Other Stories, to critical acclaim.
1921Ten stories, including ‘The Stranger’ and ‘The Daughtersof the Late Colonel’ in the London Mercury. Moves toMontana-sur-Sierre in Switzerland, writes ‘At the Bay’,‘The Doll’s House’ and other stories. Expresses a wish towrite about ‘family love’.
1922Moves to Paris, seeking a spiritual and physical cure for herTB. Writes ‘The Fly’. Returns to Switzerland where shefinishes ‘The Canary’.Moves to Gurdjieff’sInstitute for theHarmonious Develop-ment of Man. Joins themainly Russian communeat Fontainebleau not as adisciple, but on a personalquest to ‘be real’.
1923Dies 9 January.Numerous posthumouspublications of herpoems, stories, letters,reviews and journals inover twenty languages.
KM memorabilia: typewriter; Japanese fan; ornamental giltItalian box with a miniature of Raphael’s Madonna and
carved wood; and a flax poi and bag with red silk lining.Alexander Turnbull Library F84795 1/2; F84794 1/2; F84796 1/2
KATHERINE MANSFIELD
