Katherine Mansfield would not want to return to New Zealand, says C.K. Stead

Katherine Mansfield died and is buried in France.

Katherine Mansfield's remains being exhumed from France and laid to rest in Wellington would be like the realisation of her very own nightmare, according to New Zealand literary legend C.K. Stead.

He said he immediately remembered reading the famous author's account of her dream when he heard the proposal to move her remains.

"It was a very happy dream that she was on a ship going back to New Zealand and then the dream turned into a nightmare when she realised she didn't have a return ticket," he said.

Last week Wellington Mayor Justin Lester confirmed he had written to French authorities in support of bringing Mansfield's remains back to her birthplace, "a place she held fondly in her heart", he said.

The move is being led by the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Society.

Mansfield was buried in Avon, France, where she died of tuberculosis in 1923 at age 34.

"It's a rather bizarre attempt I think by Wellington to claim her, well, I mean, they have claimed her," Stead said.

The Alexander Turnbull Library, the 3m-tall statue of Mansfield on Lambton Quay and Katherine Mansfield House & Garden all pay homage to her.

Yet the young author was desperate to escape New Zealand and in 1908 she left for Europe, never to return again.

Stead said Mansfield may have reconciled with "the country at the bottom of the world" had she lived longer.

"By that time she was established in a very sophisticated, intellectual, literary and social context in London and in Europe and she would not have wanted to come back to New Zealand, which from her point of view, at that time, was a colonial backwater."

Stead said Mansfield's current resting place was representative of her as an internationally renowned writer.

Victoria University literature professor Mark Williams also said he questioned Wellington's claim on Mansfield's remains.

"I guess we think after all this time we've come into the big world, we're a country that other people respect and understand.

"We're not just a colony at the bottom of the world.

"But is the desire to bring her back a sign of our maturity, a sign of our having a more confident sense of our place in the world? Or a claim based on insecurity and a desire to attach ourselves to somebody who ambivalently belonged to us?"

Williams said it was important to note some of Mansfield's best work was based on her later affectionate recollections of growing up in New Zealand.

He said that did not however necessarily mean she wanted to be buried here.

He said the money used to exhume the remains would be better used to pay tribute to her in another way, like a literary award.

Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Society president Nicola Saker said it would be significant for Wellington and New Zealand to move Mansfield's remains.

Saker said the idea was first considered years ago and only after one of Mansfield's relatives encouraged the move.

"The process would not have begun without this prior agreement from the family member."

Saker said they were yet to hear back from French authorities and would only begin consultation here if they were open to the idea.