Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Mansfield
Born	Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp (1888-10-14)14 October 1888 Wellington, New Zealand
Died	9 January 1923(1923-01-09) (aged 34) Fontainebleau, Île-de-France, France
Occupation	Short story writer, poet
Nationality	British (New Zealand)
Alma mater	Queen's College, London
Period	1908–1923
Literary movement	Modernism
Spouses	George Bowden ​ ​ (m. 1908; div. 1917)​ John Middleton Murry ​ ​ (m. 1918)​
Partners	Maata Mahupuku Edith Kathleen Bendall Ida Constance Baker
Relatives	Arthur Beauchamp (grandfather) Harold Beauchamp (father) Elizabeth von Arnim (cousin)
Website
Official website

Kathleen Mansfield Murry (née Beauchamp; 14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a New Zealand writer and critic who was an important figure in the modernist movement. Her works are celebrated across the world, and have been published in 25 languages.^[1]

Born and raised in a house on Tinakori Road in the Wellington suburb of Thorndon, Mansfield was the third child in the Beauchamp family. She began school in Karori with her sisters before attending Wellington Girls' College. The Beauchamp girls later switched to the elite Fitzherbert Terrace School, where Mansfield became friends with Maata Mahupuku, who became a muse for early work and with whom she is believed to have had a passionate relationship.^[1]

Mansfield wrote short stories and poetry under a variation of her own name, Katherine Mansfield, which explored anxiety, sexuality and existentialism alongside a developing New Zealand identity. When she was 19, she left New Zealand and settled in England, where she became a friend of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Lady Ottoline Morrell and others in the orbit of the Bloomsbury Group. Mansfield was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis in 1917, and she died in France aged 34.