Katherine Mansfield - Biography and Works

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was born in Wellington, New Zealand. She settled in London and formed a close association with John Middleton Murry whom she married in 1918. In 1917 she contracted pleurisy and spent the rest of her short life on the Continent fighting it.

She destroyed much of her writing or left it unfinished, but the stories that got published are among the finest in modern English fiction. Her short stories depend for their powerless on an outward event than in a subtly embodied atmosphere.

She succeeded in becoming the virtual thunder of a distinctive New Zealand literature. Her style, which she herself once described as a special kind of prose', possesses almost the same qualities as poetry. Because of the impressionistic technique of her stories she came to be regarded as a follower of Chekov.

Among her works are: The Garden Party and Other Stories, and The Dove's Nest and Other Stories.

'The Doll's House' is a profound revelation of children's minds and hearts—the curiosity of the children to see the doll's house, the pettiness, cruelty and vanity of Isabel; the agony of the under privileged Kelveys, and the compassion of Kezia.