Katherine Mansfield in The Reading Room at Kitchen Sink Dramas

The Reading Room

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923)

Born and raised in New Zealand, the country that later formed the backdrop of many of her short stories, Katherine Mansfield lived a tragically short life, but one which produced a substantial body of work and which assured her place in the Modernist canon. After immigrating to London in her twenties with the express desire to become a writer, she embarked on a relationship with literary editor John Middleton Murry, who acted as her entry to the Bloomsbury set. Virginia Woolf later claimed that Mansfield's work was the only writing she was jealous of. Bliss and Other Stories (1920), in which this story was first published, consolidated her reputation as a writer of both great emotional lyricism and innovative technique. The featured excerpt from 'The Escape' gives a glimpse, we hope, of her great gift for communicating the subtle inner lives of men, women and children.