Katherine Mansfield and Literary Modernism

Scholars of English literature examine the pivotal role that New Zealand-born British short-story writer, poet, and essayist Mansfield (1888-1923) played in both performing and defining modernist literature. Their themes are philosophy and fiction; self, voice, and other; class and gender; and biography and autobiography. Among the topics are Mansfield, Rhythm, and Henri Bergson; authentic existence and her characters; voice and affect in her short fiction; when distortion and the grotesque become the same job in Mansfield and Virginia Woolf; her legacy; and coldness in her works. The 16 essays are from a September 2008 conference in London. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Janet Wilson is Professor of English and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Northampton, UK, Research Fellow in New Zealand Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, and Co-Editor of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing. Gerri Kimber is Associate Lecturer at The Open University, UK. She is co-editor of the literary journal Katherine Mansfield Studies. Susan Reid is Associate Editor of Katherine Mansfield Studies and Reviews Editor for the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.