Katherine Mansfield and Germany

"Katherine Mansfield was not her ‘real’ name, but in Germany she chose to have another. What was she doing there, in disguise in a little spa town, married to one man but pregnant to another, submitting herself to the hosings, the ‘overbody wash’, the barefoot walking and vegetarian diet, observing the locals with a wickedly comic yet accurate and essentially charitable eye, and writing brilliant stories about them which she would come to dismiss, wrongly many believe, as ‘juvenile’. There has always been so much mystery about this early period in the life of one destined to ‘alter for good and all our notion of what goes to make a story’ (Elizabethe Bowen), to influence the writing and elicit the envy of Virginia Woolf, to help define by example what is meant by the term ‘literary Modernism’, and to cement herself for ever into the literary consciousness of her homeland, New Zealand. It is to Worishofen her mother brings the young Katherine in 1909, leaving her there to deal with her predicament alone, and returning home to New Zealand to strike her unmanageable daughter out of her will. There more than a hundred years later a small iron statue of Katherine sits reading beside a pond in a woodsy park, a town square bears her name, and a collocation of international scholars gathers to discuss and read papers about the mysteries of her sojourn ‘in a German pension’. The present book publishes their deliberations."

--C.K. Stead, ONZ, CBE, FRSL, Professor Emeritus, University of Auckland

"This elegant and timely volume brings into focus Mansfield’s creative process as it emerged through crucial encounters, influences, and exchanges, from her earliest engagement with 19th century German music and poetry to her legacy in the German Democratic Republic. Katherine Mansfield and Germany contributes new understandings of modernism’s locations and its cultural formations. The essays and introduction are written with inspiring liveliness, sophistication and clarity, making this volume a pleasure to read and learn from."

--Rishona Zimring, Professor of English, Lewis & Clark College

"Katherine Mansfield has long been recognised as a writer whose sensibilities were shaped by transnational, transcultural influences and imaginaries. Katherine Mansfield and Germany maps an aspect to this expansive worldview that has been deserving of far greater attention. The early stories Mansfield first published in the journal The New Age,based on her seven-month stay in Germany, receive especially insightful re-readings. What emerges across this book is a deeper understanding of the ways in which Mansfield was energised by other national literatures and cross-cultural exchanges."

--Chris Mourant, Lecturer in 20th Century Literature, University of Birmingham