Katherine Mansfield - by Gerri Kimber (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A revealing look at the life and writing of the great modernist.

This biography explores the life and work of Katherine Mansfield, one of literary modernism's most significant writers. On the fringes of Bloomsbury, and friends with D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, T. S. Eliot, and many others, Mansfield was at the heart of literary London at its most experimental. By the time of her death in 1923, aged just thirty-four, she had broken boundaries and created new ways of writing that led her literary sparring partner Virginia Woolf to later admit that Mansfield's "was the only writing I was ever jealous of." Based on compelling new research, Gerri Kimber challenges previous conceptions surrounding the author's life, uncovers friendships and relationships formerly barely acknowledged, and offers innovative readings of Mansfield's most celebrated stories.

Review Quotes

"Kimber's much-anticipated biography is one of those once-in-a-decade books that promises to shift by significant degrees our understanding of this leading modernist's short but intensely lived creative life. Mansfield steps from the pages of Kimber's carefully researched account in a fresh combination of roles. A Hidden Life also gives us a Mansfield who was not only an innovator of the modernist short story, but also a pioneer in the now boom genre of fictionalized life-writing."--Elleke Boehmer, novelist, professor of world literature in English, University of Oxford, and patron of the Katherine Mansfield Society

"With its new findings, Katherine Mansfield: A Hidden Life transforms our understandings of Mansfield and of modernism. A world expert on Mansfield, Kimber has extensively researched the fascinating entanglements of Mansfield's life to produce a biography like no other."--Maggie Humm, author of "The Bloomsbury Photographs"

"This is a glorious treat for all Katherine Mansfield enthusiasts. It's a painstakingly researched and stylishly told account of Mansfield's tempestuous life, with much new information, and sensitive analysis of her brilliant short stories."--Dame Jacqueline Wilson

About the Author

Gerri Kimber is visiting professor in the Department of English at the University of Northampton. She was president of the Katherine Mansfield Society for ten years (2010-20) and has published extensively on Mansfield's life and work.