Katherine Mansfield Short Stories

Katherine Mansfield was a master of the modern short story. She crafted precise pictures of individual moments and scenes, resulting in deft narratives that are as devastating as they are beautiful. While the early 20th century novel has received a significant amount of critical attention, the short story has been somewhat overlooked. Nonetheless, as Mansfield’s biographer states, the short story ‘was often the most aesthetically experimental, formally innovative, emotionally powerful prose form of the early twentieth century.’ One critic has gone so far as to call it ‘the chosen form of the exile’, due to its daring and artistically marginal status.

This study will use the idea of the exile as a starting point for discussion. It includes some of Mansfield’s most important works and takes us through a number of her most common themes. Questions we might ask include: ‘to what degree are Mansfield’s character’s exiled from society?’; ‘How does the short story form allow her to convey her meaning better than in a novel?’ and ‘what kind of events and emotions hold these stories together?’

STUDY DETAILS:

• Five meetings on Zoom facilitated by Karina Jakubowicz
• Saturdays, 6.00-8.00 pm, 4 November-2 December 2023
• Stories to be studied (in order):
  1. Bliss
  2. Prelude
  3. The Garden Party (the story, not the whole collection)
  4. Her First Ball and At the Bay
  5. The Daughters of the Late Colonel
  Most are available free of charge from the Katherine Mansfield Society.
• £175 to include introductory notes