Author(s): Claire Tomalin

Biography & Memoir

I am a secretive person to my last bones, wrote Katherine Mansfield at the end of her life.
When she died in 1923, her friends mourned her lost beauty and brilliant gifts, but acknowledged that she remained an enigma. Since then, the true facts have been slowly uncovered to reveal a complex character and sequence of events which Claire Tomalin's biography presents as a classic tragedy: that of an outstanding woman who found herself trapped by forces she herself had set in motion.

On her arrival in London from New Zealand in 1908, Katherine seemed the heroic embodiment of the New Woman. She had thrown off family and convention in bold pursuit of freedom and art; but even as she reached out for them, she found they exacted a terrible price. Katherine was no saint, yet she found herself forced into the role and sufferings of a martyr.
Sombre as her life was, it was enlivened by a brilliant group of friends and a good deal of comedy. There were elements of farce about both her marriages, and John Middleton Murry, with his worship of genius and determination to associate himself with it, is a richly comic figure. The complicated web of relations between the Murrys and the D. H. Lawrences also had moments of high humour.
Claire Tomalin unravels these to show that the links between Katherine and Lawrence were closer and more important than acknowledged.
Virginia Woolf was also haunted by the power and pungency of Katherine's character, and judged her her only rival among contemporary women writers. Had she lived, their rivalry would undoubtedly have developed. Instead, Katherine left a personal myth as potent as her work.

This book explores the myth, the questions and the truths behind it, with sympathy for the woman and respect for her achievement. In doing so, it tells a story surprisingly different from any earlier version.