Katherine Mansfield, still New Zealand’s most famous author – despite the increasing claims of Lloyd Jones – has been further memorialised with the creation of the international Katherine Mansfield Society.
The Society’s website aims to be the world’s most comprehensive hub of information on Mansfield. It includes images, literature on Mansfield and downloadable versions of many of her short stories.
Katherine Mansfield is one of those authors whom I studied at high school and have scarcely read since. For some such authors, high school exposure was enough to give me a lifetime aversion to their work: the most prominent author to fall victim to this syndrome is Charles Dickens, whose work I found impossibly protracted and tedious as a teenager. But I enjoyed the Mansfield stories I studied, and I am not sure why I haven’t read more of her work.
To make up for this, I have just started reading her Stories. But if you are an experienced Mansfield hand, or want to take the first steps into discovering her work, then the Katherine Mansfield Society seems like a good place to start. And they are very keen to attract new members!
Thanks for this, Tim. I hadn\’t heard of the society before I read your blog.