Jeffey Meyers - Katherine Mansfield: A Darker View

KATHERINE MANSFIELD

A Darker View

Books by Jeffrey Meyers

BIOGRAPHY

A Fever at the Core: The Idealist in Politics

Married to Genius

Katherine Mansfield

The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis

Hemingway

Manic Power: Robert Lowell and His Circle

D. H. Lawrence

Joseph Conrad

Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy

Scott Fitzgerald

Edmund Wilson

Robert Frost

Bogart: A Life in Hollywood

Gary Cooper: American Hero

Privileged Moments: Encounters with Writers

Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation

CRITICISM

Fiction and the Colonial Experience

The Wounded Spirit: T. E. Lawrences Seven Pillars of Wisdom

A Readers Guide to George Orwell

Painting and the Novel

Homosexuality and Literature

D. H. Lawrence and the Experience of Italy

Disease and the Novel

The Spirit of Biography

BIBLIOGRAPHY

T. E. Lawrence: A Bibliography

Catalogue of the Library of the Late Siegfried Sassoon

George Orwell: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism

EDITED COLLECTIONS

George Orwell: The Critical Heritage

Robert Lowell: Interviews and Memoirs

EDITED ORIGINAL ESSAYS

Hemingway: Life into Art

Wyndham Lewis by Roy Campbell

Wyndham Lewis: A Revaluation

D. H. Lawrence and Tradition

The Legacy of D. H. Lawrence

The Craft of Literary Biography

The Biographers Art

T. E. Lawrence: Soldier, Writer, Legend

Graham Greene: A Revaluation

A Darker View

by

JEFFREY MEYERS

With a New Introduction

First Cooper Square Press Edition 2002

This Cooper Square Press paperback edition of Katherine Mansfield is an unabridged republication of the edition first published in 1978 in London, with the addition of a new introduction. It is reprinted by arrangement with the author.

Copyright 1978 by Jeffrey Meyers

New introduction copyright 2002 by Jeffrey Meyers

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

Published by Cooper Square Press

An Imprint of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

150 Fifth Avenue, Suite 817

New York, New York 10011

Distributed by National Book Network

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN: 978-0-8154-1197-0

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.481992. Manufactured in the United States of America.

For Val, again

Between

Between

Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of the illustrations used. Should there be any omissions in this respect, we apologise and shall be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgments in future editions.

It is a pleasure to acknowledge the generous assistance I received while writing this book. The University of Colorado provided two grants for research in New Zealand and in England. Margaret Scott, who is editing Katherine Mansfields letters, allowed me to read copies of all the correspondence she had collected. My friends helped me in important ways. I am grateful to Dr Sheldon Cooperman for expert advice in medical matters; to Werner and Elisabeth Alferink for valuable information about Wrishofen; to Ron Billingsley for photographs; to Felipe Orlando for addresses in Spain; and to Freddie and Naomi Earlle for splendid hospitality while I was working in London.

For personal interviews and letters I would like to thank William Craddock Barclay, Edith Bendall, Gerald Brenan, Dorothy Brett, David Drey, A. S. Frere, David Garnett, Ruth Herrick, Enid Hilton, Lady Juliette Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Patrick Lawlor, Frank Lea, John Manchester, Colin Murry, who spoke to me for twelve hours, Mary Murry, Richard Murry, Dorothy Richards, Frank Swinnerton, Oliver Trowell, Julian Vinogradoff, Montague Weekly, and Dame Rebecca West.

For letters about Katherine I am grateful to Enid Bagnold, Ida Baker, Barbara Barr, Anne Bennett, Sylvia Berkman, Jean Bickler, Sharon Clark, Adam Curle, Georgina DAngelo, Robert G. Davis, William Gerhardie, Ian Gordon, Anne Hardham, Tara Heinemann, Alfred Knopf, Gerald Lacy, Dan Laurence, Wallace Martin, Lucy OBrien, Jeanne Renshaw, Elinor Short, Catherine Stoye, William Targ, E. W. Tedlock, Douglas Trowell, Craig Wallace, Sylvia Townsend Warner, John Waterlow, Seymour Weiner, Celeste Wright and George Zytaruk.

Mary Dalton of the University of Windsor, Ontario, kindly sent me copies of Katherines letters to Garnet Trowell; and I also received useful information from Donald Eddy of Cornell University, Joseph McCarthy of Fordham University, P. J. Croft of Kings College, Cambridge, Mary Trott of Smith College, David Farmer of the University of Texas, Helen Slotkin of the University of Cincinnati, Thomas Whitehead of Temple University, P. B. Freshwater of Birmingham University, John Isard of the Guildhall School of Music, Francis Puslowski of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences, and Stefan Traugott of the Instytut Badan Literakich in Warsaw. Florence Schwartz did research for me in the New York Public Library. My wife provided rigorous scrutiny and critical insight. Aladeen Smith was a superb editor and typist.