edit]Meeting Murry

Although discouraged by the volume's relative lack of success, Mansfield submitted a lightweight story to a new avant-garde magazine called Rhythm. The piece was rejected by the magazine's editor, John Middleton Murry, who requested something darker. Mansfield responded with The Woman at the Store, a tale of murder and mental illness.

In 1911 Mansfield and Murry began a relationship that culminated in their marriage in 1918. They led a troubled life during this time - Mansfield left Murry twice in 1911–13.^[10] In October 1912, the publisher of Rhythm, Stephen Swift, absconded to Europe, and left Murry responsible for the debts the magazine had accumulated. Mansfield pledged her father's allowance towards the magazine, but it was discontinued, being reorganized as The Blue Review in 1913 and folding after three issues.^[6] Mansfield and Murry were persuaded by their friend Gilbert Cannan to rent a cottage next to his windmill in Cholesbury, Buckinghamshire in 1913, in an attempt to alleviate Mansfield of her ill health.^[11] It has been suggested that she was suffering from gonorrhoea amongst other things, but there is no real evidence for this. In January 1914 they moved to Paris, with the hope that the change of setting would make writing for both of them easier. However, Mansfield wrote only one story during her time there (Something Childish But Very Natural) before Murry was recalled to London to declare bankruptcy.^[6] Mansfield had a brief affair in 1914 with French writer Francis Carco; her visiting him in Paris in February 1915^[6] was retold in one of her short stories, An Indiscreet Journey. ^[1]

Despite this turbulence in Mansfield's life, she entered into her most productive period of writing in early 1916, and her relationship with Murry also improved.^[1] The couple had befriended D. H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda von Richthofen, in 1913, and maintained a strong relationship with them until falling out in 1916. Mansfield began to broaden her literary acquaintances for the remainder of the year, encountering Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Lytton Strachey and Bertrand Russell through social gatherings and introductions from others.^[1]

At the beginning of 1917 Mansfield and Murry separated, ^[1] although he continued to visit her at her new apartment.^[6] Baker, whom Mansfield often called, with mixture of affection and disdain, her " wife", moved in with her shortly afterwards.^[8] Mansfield entered into her most prolific period of writing post-1916, which began with several stories, including Mr Reginald Peacock's Day and A Dill Pickle, being published in The New Age. Woolf and her husband, Leonard, who had recently set up Hogarth Press, approached her for a story, and Mansfield presented " Prelude", which she had begun writing in 1915 as The Aloe. The story is centred around a family of New Zealanders moving home, with little external plot. Although it failed to reach a wider audience and was little noticed and criticized on its publication in 1918, it later became one of Mansfield's most celebrated works.^[6]

In December 1917 Mansfield became ill, and was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Rejecting the idea of a sanatorium on the basis that it would cut her off from writing, ^[5] she took the only available option, to move abroad during the English winter.^[6] She moved to Bandol, France, and stayed at a half-deserted and cold hotel, where she became depressed. However, she continued to produce stories, including Je ne parle pas franç ais, one of her darker works (believed to have been inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, it is a deeply personal work that casts Murry in negative light). Bliss, the story that lent its name to her second collection of stories in 1920, was also published in 1918. Her health continued to deteriorate, and she had her first lung haemorrhage in March.^[6]

By April, Mansfield's divorce from Bowden was finalized and she and Murry married, although they parted two weeks later.^[6] They rejoined, and in March 1919 Murry became editor of Athenaeum, a prestigious weekly journal. Mansfield wrote over 100 reviews for the magazine, and they were published as a collection, posthumously, in Novels and Novelists by Murry. For the winter of 1918–19 she and Baker stayed in a villa in San Remo, Italy. Their relationship came under strain during this period, and after writing to Murry to express her feelings of depression, he stayed over Christmas.^[6] Although her relationship with Murry became increasingly distant after 1918^[6] and the two often lived apart, ^[10] this intervention of his spurred her on, and she wrote The Man Without a Temperament, the story of an ill wife and her long-suffering husband. Biographer Joanna Woods has said that this work signalled a turning point for Mansfield, when she was able to display a " new objectivity that gives the story a universal dimension".^[6]

Miss Brill, the bittersweet story of a fragile woman living an ephemeral life of observation and simple pleasures in Paris, established Mansfield as one of the preeminent writers of the Modernist period on its publication in the 1920s Bliss. The title story from that collection, " Bliss", which involved a similar character facing her husband's infidelity, also found critical acclaim. She followed with the equally praised collection The Garden Party, published in 1922.

Mansfield spent her last years seeking increasingly unorthodox cures for her tuberculosis. In February 1922, she consulted the Russian physician Ivan Manoukhin. His " revolutionary" treatment, which consisted of bombarding her spleen with X-rays, caused Mansfield to develop heat flashes and numbness in her legs.

Mansfield is widely considered one of the best short story writers of her period. A number of her works, including Miss Brill, Prelude, The Garden Party, The Doll's House and The Fly, are frequently collected in short story anthologies. Mansfield also proved ahead of her time in her adoration of Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov, and incorporated some of his themes and techniques into her writing.

Mount Roskill Grammar School in Auckland, Rangiora High School in North Canterbury, Tauranga Girls' College in Tauranga, Westlake Girls' High School in Auckland, Macleans College in Auckland, Wellington Girls' College in Wellington, Westlake Girls' High School in Auckland, Southland Girls' High School in Invercargill and Rangitoto College in Auckland have a house named after her. Karori Normal School in Wellington has a stone monument dedicated to her with a plaque commemorating her work and her time at the school.

A street in Menton, France, where she lived and wrote, is named after her and a Fellowship is offered annually to enable a New Zealand writer to work at her former home, the Villa Isola Bella. New Zealand's pre-eminent short story competition is also named in her honour.

She was the subject of the 1973 BBC miniseries A Picture of Katherine Mansfield starring Vanessa Redgrave. The six-part series included adaptations of Mansfield's life and of her short stories.