Well! Well! This book is quite an amazing revelation. I am not sure if, “truth is stranger than fiction,” but truth can certainly be more interesting and riveting to read. This biography of Katherine Mansfield by Gerri Kimber is both riveting from start to finish and also an astonishing revelation of Mansfield’s life, literary achievements, and exposition of the lives she was involved with.

There existed prior to this publication other biographies concerning Mansfield, and a significant amount written about her and her work, and especially her relationship and connection with the Bloomsbury Group. Why another biography? To expose the misinformation (both accidental and deliberate), lies, poor previous research, and in a sense to set ‘the record straight’.

Kimber’s ‘detective work’ in this regard is incredibly thorough and was a monumental task of comparing extant documents, unearthing hitherto unknown ones, and exposing the deliberate deceptions, especially those by Mansfield’s husband John Middleton Murray, he is shown with little room for doubt, to be a vile, loathsome person. “Murray, ‘the most derided, most vilified man of letters in contemporary England’, completely fails, … to mention Orage, one person who ‘loomed large in Katherine Mansfield’s life’ (p. 264).

This biography is approximately 300 pages long, and after a short Introduction consists of nine chapters as shown below, these are followed by References, Bibliography and Acknowledgements:

1. Childhood, 1888-1908
2. London and Europe, 1908-9
3. The New Age, 1910-11
4. Rhythm and the Blue Review, 1912-14
5. Death and Disillusionment, 1915-17
6. Marriage and Discontentment, 1915-17
7. Endgame, 1921-3
8. Afterlife

The book obviously is concerned with Mansfield’s own life, however, by explaining (and exposing) her association with many famous characters such as Virginia Woolf, A. Huxley, P. Ouspensky, Gurdjieeff, D.H. Lawrence, J.M. Murray, A.R. Orage, James Joyce, et al., these people are shown to be very different to the way they have been portrayed to the general public. For example, Lawrence’s behaviour towards others, and his wife, on regular occasions is nothing short of disgusting and inexcusable. Many of these revelations, backed-up by written evidence, not hearsay or unfounded opinions, left me aghast!

The book also, perhaps unwittingly, exposes the British ‘class system’ and their sense of superiority, nowhere more evident in the way the ‘so-called’ educated middle to upperclass refer to the colonies, such as India, Australia, and Katherine Mansfield’s native New Zealand. This is a very important influence because Mansfield’s work is concerned with the lives of others, their social standing, and relationships with their ‘so-called’ peers. “As we have already discerned, all of Mansfield’s mature fiction writing has a sociological basis” (p. 231).

The Garden Party, one of Mansfield’s most celebrated and most discussed stories, is set in New Zealand and looks penetratingly at the plight of the working classes, “...the presentation of staid, middle-class reaction to social inferiors, a child’s last attempt to understand the world naturally and simplistically, without the need for a social mask ...” (p.231).

Orage was possibly the greatest influence on Mansfield’s literary career. I will quote this passage in full as it really encapsulates the essence of Mansfield’s work:

“Much of Orage’s critical writing is concerned with prose style. His search for purity of style seems to be related to his ambition for a classless culture reflecting his ambition for a classless society:’ a pure style of writing reveals nothing but the thoughts and pure individuality of the writer. His idiosyncrasies, his class, his education, his reading should be kept out of sight. [...Pure style is pure mind.” Mansfield’s achievements in her prose echo Orage’s dictum. Her own deceptively simple stories are easy to read, while hiding multiple layers of meaning...”. [my emphasis] (p.227)

Mansfield was a pioneer of “fictionalised life-writing” and an innovator in the genre of the Modernist short story. She was not a member of the Bloomsbury Group per se, as I believe she could see through their self-inflated importance, and the ridiculous oneupmanship games they played. Like Claude Cahun was accepted by the Surrealists because she was too good to be ignored or excluded by them, so Mansfield had to be accepted by the Bloomsbury elite because her work was too good to be dismissed or ignored. As Virginia Woolf, Mansfield’s literary sparring partner said, “Mansfield’s writing was the only writing I was ever jealous of”(cover).

I will not discuss Mansfield’s convoluted sexual affairs, health, theosophical/spiritual influences, or personal family life as I do not want to spoil the book for prospective readers, all I can say is, ‘hold on for the ride’. This book, apart from being a very interesting read, is an important new scholarly resource on the life and work of Katherine Mansfield. It throws new light on her, “Hidden Life”, brilliant.