What do you think?
Rate this book
Wild Places: Selected Stories
A gorgeous hardback of Katherine Mansfield's best stories, selected by her biographer Claire Harman
Katherine Mansfield was the only writer Virginia Woolf envied. Mansfield transformed the short story genre with her work, creating stories miraculous in their intensity yet seemingly so simple. The shift of a heart, the beat of a moment, the changing of the in these stories emotional universes are contained within glimpses.
Mansfield only lived to the age of 34 but in that time wrote stories true to her indomitable spirit. A hundred years on from her death, Mansfield's biographer, Claire Harman, has created this new selection to show us the master of the short story form in full flight.
'There is something rapturous about her work...she has the power to distil the apparently inconsequential into frozen moments laden with significance' Guardian
'Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people'Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Mansfield was the only writer Virginia Woolf envied. Mansfield transformed the short story genre with her work, creating stories miraculous in their intensity yet seemingly so simple. The shift of a heart, the beat of a moment, the changing of the in these stories emotional universes are contained within glimpses.
Mansfield only lived to the age of 34 but in that time wrote stories true to her indomitable spirit. A hundred years on from her death, Mansfield's biographer, Claire Harman, has created this new selection to show us the master of the short story form in full flight.
'There is something rapturous about her work...she has the power to distil the apparently inconsequential into frozen moments laden with significance' Guardian
'Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people'Katherine Mansfield
272 pages, Hardcover
Published April 1, 2023
19 people are currently reading
137 people want to read
About the author
Katherine Mansfield
1,004 books1,223 followersKathleen Mansfield Murry (née Beauchamp) was a prominent New Zealand modernist writer of short fiction who wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield.
Katherine 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 later works such as "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.
Katherine Mansfield was part of a "new dawn" in English literature with T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. She was associated with the brilliant group of writers who made the London of the period the centre of the literary world.
Nevertheless, Mansfield was a New Zealand writer - she could not have written as she did had she not gone to live in England and France, but she could not have done her best work if she had not had firm roots in her native land. She used her memories in her writing from the beginning, people, the places, even the colloquial speech of the country form the fabric of much of her best work.
Mansfield's stories were the first of significance in English to be written without a conventional plot. Supplanting the strictly structured plots of her predecessors in the genre (Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells), Mansfield concentrated on one moment, a crisis or a turning point, rather than on a sequence of events. The plot is secondary to mood and characters. The stories are innovative in many other ways. They feature simple things - a doll's house or a charwoman. Her imagery, frequently from nature, flowers, wind and colours, set the scene with which readers can identify easily.
Themes too are universal: human isolation, the questioning of traditional roles of men and women in society, the conflict between love and disillusionment, idealism and reality, beauty and ugliness, joy and suffering, and the inevitability of these paradoxes. Oblique narration (influenced by Chekhov but certainly developed by Mansfield) includes the use of symbolism - the doll's house lamp, the fly, the pear tree - hinting at the hidden layers of meaning. Suggestion and implication replace direct detail.
Katherine 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 later works such as "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.
Katherine Mansfield was part of a "new dawn" in English literature with T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. She was associated with the brilliant group of writers who made the London of the period the centre of the literary world.
Nevertheless, Mansfield was a New Zealand writer - she could not have written as she did had she not gone to live in England and France, but she could not have done her best work if she had not had firm roots in her native land. She used her memories in her writing from the beginning, people, the places, even the colloquial speech of the country form the fabric of much of her best work.
Mansfield's stories were the first of significance in English to be written without a conventional plot. Supplanting the strictly structured plots of her predecessors in the genre (Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells), Mansfield concentrated on one moment, a crisis or a turning point, rather than on a sequence of events. The plot is secondary to mood and characters. The stories are innovative in many other ways. They feature simple things - a doll's house or a charwoman. Her imagery, frequently from nature, flowers, wind and colours, set the scene with which readers can identify easily.
Themes too are universal: human isolation, the questioning of traditional roles of men and women in society, the conflict between love and disillusionment, idealism and reality, beauty and ugliness, joy and suffering, and the inevitability of these paradoxes. Oblique narration (influenced by Chekhov but certainly developed by Mansfield) includes the use of symbolism - the doll's house lamp, the fly, the pear tree - hinting at the hidden layers of meaning. Suggestion and implication replace direct detail.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 18, 2024
Love all Mansfield’s travel stories in this collection including The Little Governess. Very perceptive, not only regarding the physical environment but with the psychological insights of the people she encounters along her way. These highly personal interactions occurring in foreign , new places manage to convey a heightened feeling of perception that the reader is able to access in an engaging and often thrilling way. It surprised me how modern most of the stories are. Very relatable for contemporary audiences with strong feminist insights into the nature of consent and women’s precarious situation in patriarchal society.
April 3, 2024
All the best stories from the entirety of KMs collected works. If you want to dip your toes into Mansfield, this is the perfect way to start. And read in conjunction with Claire Harman's biography about KM (All Sorts of Lives)... perfection.
My favourites - the ones that stick with me most:
Prelude + At the Bay
- KM wanted to write about NZ in order capture the essence of absolutely everything after the death of her beloved brother in WW1. In these cinematic stories she seems to float through and around the characters embuing everything with that specialness as only she can... from the coins of sunlight reflecting on the rockpools when the tide is low, to the bright red pink and yellow sun bonnets of the children, to the little Trout boys like twinkling spiders grubbing around on the beach, to the detached way Linda Burnell assesses her distaste of motherhood and the burgeoning sexuality of Beryl who so wants to be admired but isn't ready for what that might mean in its entirety... The pacing of these stories is perfect. You feel the agitation of the whole house as Stanley Burnell rushes around getting ready for work and you feel the exhale the women share as he leaves. You feel the slow open and close of the day as the sun rises and sets.
The Woman at the Store
- KM meets country and western - think that amazing film The Power of the Dog
The Stranger
- Everything about the dynamic between these characters feels so real and is clearly based on her own parents
Bliss
- Amazing satire of the Bloomsbury set of writers and all their pretentions etc. While at the same time being such an exquisitely beautiful story in itself... I cant get that image of the milky blue bowl with the dusky red grapes on it out of my mind.
The Garden Party
- A man has just died down in the lane but the Sheridan's garden party must go on and all too easily, like Laura, you as a reader are drawn into the heady enjoyment of this garden party, the cream puffs, the canna lilies while within hearing distance a woman is left with many mouths to feed and a dead husband.
Life of Ma Parker
- Grabs me by the heart every time
The Daughters of the Late Colonel
- Satire at its best! Austen would approve I think although it seems as though the British public and critics didn't quite get the self- denigrating humor that us Kiwis tend to share. I literally laughed out loud during the 'meringues' scene.
Also brilliantly poignant portrait and critique of the reality of many women's lives in the early 1900s...
The Doll's House
- I seen the little lamp 😢
This story breaks my heart every time
A Cup of Tea
- KM just digs right down into the 'subteranean world' of motivations. This gorgeous little study of female jealousy is perfect
My favourites - the ones that stick with me most:
Prelude + At the Bay
- KM wanted to write about NZ in order capture the essence of absolutely everything after the death of her beloved brother in WW1. In these cinematic stories she seems to float through and around the characters embuing everything with that specialness as only she can... from the coins of sunlight reflecting on the rockpools when the tide is low, to the bright red pink and yellow sun bonnets of the children, to the little Trout boys like twinkling spiders grubbing around on the beach, to the detached way Linda Burnell assesses her distaste of motherhood and the burgeoning sexuality of Beryl who so wants to be admired but isn't ready for what that might mean in its entirety... The pacing of these stories is perfect. You feel the agitation of the whole house as Stanley Burnell rushes around getting ready for work and you feel the exhale the women share as he leaves. You feel the slow open and close of the day as the sun rises and sets.
The Woman at the Store
- KM meets country and western - think that amazing film The Power of the Dog
The Stranger
- Everything about the dynamic between these characters feels so real and is clearly based on her own parents
Bliss
- Amazing satire of the Bloomsbury set of writers and all their pretentions etc. While at the same time being such an exquisitely beautiful story in itself... I cant get that image of the milky blue bowl with the dusky red grapes on it out of my mind.
The Garden Party
- A man has just died down in the lane but the Sheridan's garden party must go on and all too easily, like Laura, you as a reader are drawn into the heady enjoyment of this garden party, the cream puffs, the canna lilies while within hearing distance a woman is left with many mouths to feed and a dead husband.
Life of Ma Parker
- Grabs me by the heart every time
The Daughters of the Late Colonel
- Satire at its best! Austen would approve I think although it seems as though the British public and critics didn't quite get the self- denigrating humor that us Kiwis tend to share. I literally laughed out loud during the 'meringues' scene.
Also brilliantly poignant portrait and critique of the reality of many women's lives in the early 1900s...
The Doll's House
- I seen the little lamp 😢
This story breaks my heart every time
A Cup of Tea
- KM just digs right down into the 'subteranean world' of motivations. This gorgeous little study of female jealousy is perfect
January 26, 2024
4.5 stars
A very enjoyable collection of Katherine Mansfield's work, whose name should be remembered in the literary modernist movement for her work in pushing the forms of writing.
Virginia Woolf saw Mansfield as the only writer who equalled her skills, could compete with her and in reading this collection, you can see why. I enjoy Mansfield's work more in some respects for its ability to skewer class and colonialist fantasies in a way Woolf's work often could not see beyond (the short story 'Bliss' for example, which Woolf threw to the ground upon reading, because of its ability to satirise the Bloomsbury group). But it does not do justice to Mansfield to judge her solely in opposition to Woolf. Indeed, if Mansfield had not died early, I believe her name would be respected and known alongside Woolf's, on her own merits alone.
It should be noted that Mansfield's stories occasionally betray a racist, Orientalist eye, though these mentions are brief and few in number. Given her family were white upper class settlers established first in New Zealand, and then later back in the heart of empire, it is unsurprising.
Mansfield's ability to capture the impressions of environment around her characters, and translate their inner lives I particular shines through in this collection.
A very enjoyable collection of Katherine Mansfield's work, whose name should be remembered in the literary modernist movement for her work in pushing the forms of writing.
Virginia Woolf saw Mansfield as the only writer who equalled her skills, could compete with her and in reading this collection, you can see why. I enjoy Mansfield's work more in some respects for its ability to skewer class and colonialist fantasies in a way Woolf's work often could not see beyond (the short story 'Bliss' for example, which Woolf threw to the ground upon reading, because of its ability to satirise the Bloomsbury group). But it does not do justice to Mansfield to judge her solely in opposition to Woolf. Indeed, if Mansfield had not died early, I believe her name would be respected and known alongside Woolf's, on her own merits alone.
It should be noted that Mansfield's stories occasionally betray a racist, Orientalist eye, though these mentions are brief and few in number. Given her family were white upper class settlers established first in New Zealand, and then later back in the heart of empire, it is unsurprising.
Mansfield's ability to capture the impressions of environment around her characters, and translate their inner lives I particular shines through in this collection.
January 17, 2024
A delightful collection of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories. Read in tandem with All Sorts of Lives.
June 2, 2024
She was good actually. My faves: A Dill Pickle, Bliss, The Fly.
December 17, 2025
Absolutely adored reading these short stories across the year. I can’t believe I hadn’t read anything from KM before!
June 17, 2023
I read these stories in conjunction with Claire Newmans biography on Katherine Mansfield called All Sorts of Lives. I've commented on that book separately. Mansfield writes beautiful short stories. Her writing is crisp and captures the moment she is editing about perfectly. But her subject matters are usually quite negative. She does not shy away from difficult topics. The people in her stories are variously dissatisfied with life, reckless, heartless, or in other ways unendearing. Her stories don't make for a light read or lift the spirits. But they do make you reflect. At her best she writes with piercing precision on how people think and behave. She brings to life her characters as if they were here in the room with you now. My favourites are Prelude which is about a family who has just moved house, Mansfield intended this to be the start of a novel; and At The Bay which finds the same family on holiday. We read about them again in The Dolls House, a snippet of a short story. I also found The Garden Party an interestingly moral tale and The Daughters of the Late Colonel wonderful, if almost sinister.
Well worth dipping into. This is a beautiful selection.
Well worth dipping into. This is a beautiful selection.
July 22, 2023
Some of my favorites are: The Child-Who-Was-Tired, The Little Governess, A Dill Pickle, Bliss, Miss Brill, The Daughters of the Late Colonel, At The Bay, The Garden Party, The Doll's House, A Cup of Tea and Prelude.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews