Katherine Mansfield - A Biography

Hodder and Stoughton, Auckland, 1978. Minor fading to dustjacket spine, minor wear at dustjacket extremities, otherwise good secondhand copy.

This biography of Mansfield examines her rebellious reaction to her colonial background, her self-destructive revolt against respectability and her emotional life. Includes accounts of her lesbian friendships, love affairs, miscarriage and abortion; her period of drugs and squalor; her one-day marriage, and her extraordinary relationship with John Middleton Murray. Her last years were dominated by her quest for health in France, Italy and Switzerland. Giving up hope of a cure from conventional medecine she resorted to the mysticism of Gurdjieff in whose hands she died at the age of thirty-four. Links the events of her life with her development as a writer and discusses the influence of her friendships with her contemporaries; D. H. and Frieda Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Ottoline Morrell and others, including a hitherto unknown meeting with James Joyce.