Katherine Mansfield was acclaimed in her short lifetime. (Alexander Turnbull Library)
Katherine Mansfield was acclaimed in her short lifetime. (Alexander Turnbull Library)
In December of this year the small book that made the name of Katherine Mansfield as one of the literary giants of the 20th century was published.
Bliss and Other Stories was greeted with critical acclaim and before long Mansfield was acknowledged as one of the greatest exponents of thedifficult art of short-story writing.
"She sees everything much more vividly than we do," said a reviewer from the Times, the paper that had been so disparaging of William Pember Reeves' The Long White Cloud.
"Reading her stories is like wandering at dusk through a garden we vaguely know, accompanied by a guide carrying a little searchlight. We know everything the guide points to, but we never saw it so clearly before.
"There are stories by Miss Mansfield which are not only perfect in themselves, but perfect in their genre".
In acknowledgment of her genius, Mansfield is our New Zealander of the Year for 1920.
Tragically, her prodigious talents were extinguished just two years after Bliss when she died of tuberculosis at Fontainebleu, Paris.
A fellowship is now awarded annually in her name so a New Zealand writer can work at the Villa Bella Isola in Menton where she lived from September 1920 to May 1921.
