April 2025, Prelude, Non-spoiler thread

[☯Emily , The First]

Please use this thread to discuss the author or any information that will not spoil the story for the reader.

[Jassmine]

Planning to start this soon! I do have a small collection of Mansfield's short-stories which also includes this one. Will try to read all of them this month.

This is the copy I have:

It also includes: Je Ne Parle Pas Français, Bliss, The Little Governess, At the Bay, The Garden-Party, The Daughters of the Late Colonel, Miss Brill.

I have some subway commuting happening this week, so that should be perfect to get through a couple of those :-)

[Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂]

Jassmine wrote: "Planning to start this soon! I do have a small collection of Mansfield's short-stories which also includes this one. Will try to read all of them this month.

This is the copy I have: [bookcover:Bl..."

Oh these are some of her best, Jassmine!

I own a 'Collected Stories..." I don't think it is on Goodreads as my edition doesn't have an introduction.

I went to this exhibition a couple of months ago at the Auckland Art Gallery.

https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/wh...

& saw this painting;

The card with the painting says the artist (Anne Estelle Rice) had the idea to dress Mansfield in red instead of the drab shades she normally favoured, Te Papa (our national museum) says the colour scheme was Mansfield's idea.

It was painted in 1918, when this story was first published.
According to Wikipedia, Mansfield started this long short story in 2015 & she finished it at the urging of her friend, Virginia Woolf.

[Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂]

& way back in 2016, we had a discussion about The Garden Party and Other Stories

This was the background info thread about this.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

& my son gave the book of Mansfield's poetry I mention. (he gave me a book voucher)


I was so lucky as by the time I got round to it there were virtually no copies left, but a store in Hamilton very kindly couriered it to me (it wasn't something they usually do.) I just loved it.

[Charlene]

After I finish my Agatha Christie book, this is what I will read. I remember enjoying "Garden Party".

[Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂]

& my link said the Katherine Mansfield Garden wasn't open yet. It is now & is really beautiful.

https://hamiltongardens.co.nz/about-u...

[Ginny]

I posted this in the spoiler thread as a reply, but there are no spoilers in it, and it does give some interesting background. As does the introduction to an edition of The Aloe, which I found in Internet Archive.

Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂ wrote: Yes. I would love to know the history of Prelude/The Aloe. Maybe Mansfield couldn't originally quite come up with the content for a novel & published what she had. The ending for Prelude is quite abrupt."..."

I tracked down an interesting essay comparing the two versions.

" In April 1917, for Hogarth Press publication, Virginia Woolf asked Mansfield for a story and was offered The Aloe. Mansfield spent the summer re-writing the long short story, which came out entitled Prelude in July 1918.

It seems a well-based supposition that Mansfield re-shaped her story at Virginia Woolf's advice and request, as Mansfield was not in the habit of re-writing her stories. But it is also possible that the recommended changes coincided with her own better judgement . [.....]

The effect of these wide-ranging alterations brought about a thematically and stylistically more coherent short story [...]. "

From "THE DETACHED EXISTENCE OF A WORK OF ART:" MANSFIELD'S "THE ALOE" VERSUS
"PRELUDE" AND WOOLF'S THEORY OF FICTION
Author(s): Nóra Séllei

So The Aloe came first. This writer thinks that Prelude is an improvement.

[Jassmine]

I read about 14 pages of this so far and I have to say that I was struggling to keep track of the characters and the relationships between them quite a bit at the beginning - flipping back and forth and confirming that yes, I remembered that correctly and no, these were two different people. Not sure what's up with that, because I'm usually not struggling with characters if I'm eye-reading (happens sometimes if I'm listening to audiobook). We'll see if I get better sorted out as I get farther in. I was kind of tired when I was reading the first bit, so it might just be that.

[Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂]

Ginny wrote: "I posted this in the spoiler thread as a reply, but there are no spoilers in it, and it does give some interesting background. As does the introduction to an edition of The Aloe, which I found in I..."

Interesting Ginny - thanks so much.

There is a book on this same subject by Séllei on Gr, but it is fairly old.

Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf: A Personal and Professional Bond

[Jan]

I am reading it now and I keep drifting away. The writing is good but not riveting. There are so many characters and it is so long for a short story. I much prefer Good Country People. It is what I like about short stories. Words are not wasted. The plot is developed, and Bam! There is rising action, climax, resolution.

[Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂]

Jan wrote: "I am reading it now and I keep drifting away. The writing is good but not riveting. There are so many characters and it is so long for a short story. I much prefer Good Country People. It is what I..."

Thinking about it, this is more like a novelette - a term that has gone out of vogue.

https://owlcation.com/humanities/Diff...

I think of it as Impressionist sort of writing - even though the Impressionist artists were from an earlier time period.