Canary, The

Katherine Mansfield was born on 14th October 1888 into a prominent family in Wellington, New Zealand, the third of five children. A gifted Celloist, at one point she thought she might take it up professionally at the same time her early writing was published in school magazines. At 19 Katherine left for home for England, there she met the modernist writers D H Lawrence and Virginia Woolf with whom she became close friends. She travelled around Europe before returning to New Zealand in 1906 and to begin writing a series of the short stories that she would later become famous for. They often focus on moments of disruption and frequently open rather abruptly. In contrast her poetry is often overlooked and indeed it comes from seemingly a rather different part of her literary brain. Her observations and language can at times seem innocent, almost child-like. But there are others which give a very different view, another layer to be ventured into and discovered. By 1908 she had returned to London and to a rather more bohemian lifestyle. A passionate affair resulted in her becoming pregnant but married off instead to an older man who she left the same evening with the marriage unconsummated. She was then to miscarry and be cut out of her mother’s will, allegedly because of her lesbianism. In 1911 she started a relationship with John Middleton Murry a magazine editor and, although it was volatile, it enabled her to write some of her best stories. During the First World War Mansfield contracted extrapulmonary tuberculosis, which rendered any return or visit to New Zealand impossible. Katherine Mansfield died at the age of only 34 on January 9th 1923 in Fontainebleau, France.