WHY A NEW BIOGRAPHY?

There has been no new biography of Katherine Mansfield for more than twenty years. The last ‘definitive’ biography was by Antony Alpers in 1980 (a reworking of his 1954 ‘Life’). Claire Tomalin's ‘Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life’, published in 1988 and still in print, addresses areas not dealt with fully by Alpers - but discusses Katherine’s work only in passing reference. Jeffrey Meyer’s 1978 biography was reprinted in 2002 without revision. New information has come to light since then that demands a complete overhaul of traditional views and assumptions about Katherine Mansfield’s life and work.

Since 1988 all Katherine’s notebooks and letters have been transcribed and published and other material - previously embargoed - has become available due to the deaths of a number of key figures. The triangular relationship between Katherine Mansfield, John Middleton Murry and Ida Baker can now be more fully explored. A great deal of research has been done in New Zealand on Katherine's early, unpublished work - much of it autobiographical - and it's importance in understanding her development, both personal and creative. Vincent O'Sullivan and Margaret Scott have been indefatigable in their scholarly annotation and publication of her letters, journals and other early, previously unpublished, material. The most puzzling period of Katherine’s life - her teenage pregnancy and brief marriage, residence in Germany, and the affair with Floryan Sobieniowski - can now be more realistically assessed.

Review "......this collection of letters provides, finally, an accurate and reliable foundation for Mansfield scholarship."--English Literature in Transition

Modern medical research can now also challenge the ‘accepted’ view of Katherine's medical condition, particularly the very damaging (and manifestly unsafe) retrospective diagnosis by the gynaecologist Dr Sorapure which caused so much distress to Katherine during the last years of her life. He believed her to have been suffering from Gonorrhea, based - not just on her symptoms - but on her life style, her infertility, and the fact that her husband had been suffering from Gonorrhea when they met. Modern venereal pathology has a different view. At the time, experts on Tuberculosis consulted by Katherine were more familiar with the physical symptoms of the disease and its ability to infect joints as well as the pelvic cavity, but it was Sorapure she chose to trust.

John Middleton Murry's character has never been given much space in the various biographies of Katherine, except as her somewhat unsatisfactory partner, but recent revelations by his daughter and others explain a great deal about his behaviour towards Katherine. The full story of Murry’s posthumous obsession with Katherine and its consequences has never been told. John Murry’s diaries and letters are now in the Wellington library and their - unpublished - content is at times tragic, sometimes toe-curlingly embarrassing, but always compulsively readable.

© Kathleen Jones 2008