Katherine Mansfield 1888-1923

Katherine Mansfield is Aotearoa New Zealand’s most internationally recognised historical literary figure, remembered for her distinctive prose and adventurous life. Although she left at a young age to pursue the cultural offerings in the United Kingdom that she had experienced as a teenager, many of Mansfield's stories were influenced by her memories of New Zealand.

Mansfield was born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp on 14 October 1888 in Wellington. The house at 25 Tinakori Road, Thorndon in which she grew up with her parents, aunts and sisters, has been preserved as a visitor attraction and museum. Katherine Mansfield House & Garden is owned and run by the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Society, a registered charity formed by Oroya Day in 1986. Through Katherine Mansfield House & Garden, the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Society runs an annual events programme that includes talks, readings and activities to inspire literary creativity in young people. Following the purchase of the house, the Society undertook a significant restoration project to return it to its original state. The house and garden are listed as a Category 1 Historic Place.

In 2023, Katherine Mansfield House & Garden has been coordinating global opportunities to celebrate Katherine Mansfield and her legacy as one of the most influential writers of the modernist period. Speaking to the New Zealand Society of Authors, the Director of Katherine Mansfield House & Garden, Cherie Jacobson said, “This is an opportunity to uplift the awareness of one of our greatest artists. Katherine Mansfield had an extraordinary energy. Her life was one of risk and innovation, and despite illnesses and prejudice, she produced work of such luminous force, of such vivid intensity, that it ignites us afresh, even 100 years later. One idea we’ve been discussing here at the house is simply to send a letter to someone you love: Katherine’s command of letters has left a brilliant example of the power of the word on an intimate level. And you can use the KM23 postage stamp to send it!”

Mansfield’s life has been celebrated through artistic performances around New Zealand. On 26 February, Mansfield in Her Own Words was held at the Mansfield Garden in Hamilton Gardens. Anna Coddington, Lawrence Arabia, Julia Deans, Lontalius, Lorina Harding, Charlotte Yates, and French for Rabbits all performed original music inspired by and set to Katherine Mansfield’s poems. On 27 March 2023, Wānaka was host to Woman of Words, a newly created biographical dance work. Exploring her personal stories, Mansfield’s intense, captivating and all-too-short life was taken to the stage using dance, text, colour and sound. The work was co-commissioned by the Wānaka Festival of Colour with support from the Royal New Zealand Ballet Foundation.

On 7 July, Victoria University of Wellington will host Katherine

Mansfield: The Last Things and Legacies, a conference that will reflect on her final years and her legacy, and host papers, presentations, and panel talks from scholars, historians and creative artists. The conference is a collaboration between Victoria University of Wellington English Literatures and Creative Communication Programme, the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies, the International Institute of Modern Letters and the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Society and Katherine Mansfield House & Garden.

Events have been and will be hosted outside of New Zealand. In April in Cambridge, United Kingdom, awardwinning writer and critic Claire Harman took a fresh look at Mansfield’s biography and achievements side by side, through her revolutionary approach to the short story. From 13 to 15 October 2023, the Katherine Mansfield Society will host a conference in Avon, France that will take its theme from Mansfield’s claim in a 1920 letter to Ottoline Morrell that “Life is marvellous – I want to be deeply rooted in it – to live – to expand – to breathe in it – to rejoice – to share it”. Although it will be held in Mansfield’s final resting place, the conference will focus on rebirth and renewal, celebrating her love of life and the pleasure she found in the world around her.