Katherine Mansfield (Pseudonym of Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp) was the master of the short story. Mansfield evolved a distinctive prose style with many overtones of poetry. Her delicate stories focus upon internal, psychological conflicts, with a subtlety of narration and observation that reveals the influence of Anton Chekhov. In turn, she had considerable influence on the development of the short story as a form of literature.

At the age of 19, following her education in Wellington and London, Mansfield left New Zealand for England in the hope of establishing herself as a writer. Her initial disillusion is apparent in her ill-humoured collection of stories titled In a German Pension (1911). Up until 1914 her writing was published in Rhythm and The Blue Review, which was edited by the critic and essayist John Middleton Murry (whom she married in 1918 after her divorce from her first husband, George Bowden). The death of her bother in 1915 shocked her, bringing about a realization that she owed what she termed a “sacred debt” to him and to her memories of her native country. The Aloe (1916), later revised as Prelude (1918), marked the beginning of a series of short stories reminiscent of her family memories of New Zealand. These formed the basis of her collection of stories in Bliss (1920), the work that was to establish her as an esteemed writer and which typifies her talent.

The following two years were those in which Mansfield produced her best work, the height of which was  The Garden Party  (1922), a compilation of fiction including  At the Bay, The Voyage, The Stranger (set in News Zealand), and Daughters of the Late Colonel. Her final works, published posthumously, were The Dove’s Nest (1923) and Something Childish (1924). From her papers, Murry edited the Journal (1927), and later published her letters to him (1928). A battle with tuberculosis overshadowed the final five years of Mansfield’s life.