This volume offers new interpretations of Katherine Mansfield's work by bringing together recent auto/biographical and critical-theoretical approaches to her life and art. It aims to revive and update Mansfield's reputation as one of the foremost practitioners of the short story, bringing together and extending the flow of scholarship and criticism of her work over the last three decades. It includes essays by major scholars in several areas including musicology, postcolonial theory, epistolary and biographical studies, representing recent developments in Modernist studies and thus exploring her continued literary legacy to contemporary writers. It features reinterpretations of her fiction in relation to her life, historical and aesthetic studies of her literary Modernism, readings and interpretations of her work which focus on constructions of voice and self, new insights into her handling of genres such as fantasy, and the appearance of the uncanny in many stories. It will be of interest to students, general readers and scholars of Mansfield alike
Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Notes on Contributors -- Introduction; G. Kimber & J. Wilson -- PART I: BIOGRAPHICAL READINGS AND FICTION -- Signing Off: Katherine Mansfield's Last Year; V.O'Sullivan -- Katie and Chummie: Death in the Family; J.L. Mitchell -- 'A Furious Bliss': Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry 1916-1918; S.J. Kaplan -- PART II: MANSFIELD AND MODERNITY -- Mansfield as Colonial Modernist: Difference Within; E. Boehmer -- Leaping into the Eyes -- Mansfield as a Cinematic Writer; S. Sandley -- Katherine Mansfield and Music: Nineteenth-Century Echoes; D.da Sousa Correa̐Μư -- 'Is This Play?' Katherine Mansfield's Playframes; J.K. Stotz -- PART III: PSYCHOANALYTICAL READINGS -- Katherine Mansfield's Uncanniness; C. Hanson -- A Trickle of Voice: Katherine Mansfield and the Modernist Moment of Being; J. Paccaud-Huguet -- 'Ah, what is it? -- that I heard'. The Sense of Wonder in Katherine Mansfield's Stories and Poems; A. Mounic -- Cold Brains and Birthday Cake: The Art of 'Je ne parle pas fra̐Μưnais'; A. Smith -- PART IV: AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND FICTION -- 'Where is Katherine?': Longing and (Un)belonging in Katherine Mansfield's Art and Life; J. Wilson -- Mansfield and Dickens: 'I am not reading Dickens idly'; A. Smith -- 'Not always swift and breathless': Katherine Mansfield and the Familiar Letter; A. Jackson -- Meetings with 'The Great Ghost'; C.K. Stead