The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield 1919-1920

Covering the eight months between the English summers of 1919 and 1920, this volume charts Mansfield's relationship with her husband John Middleton Murry through its severest trial. Most of the letters are to him, written from Italy and the South of France, where she went to avoid the winter. It was a time of intense personal reassessment and distress, but the letters show Mansfield coming to terms with the closing off of possibilities that her tuberculosis entailed. Without fuss, she discarded earlier loyalties and even friendships as she sought for a spiritual standpoint that might turn her illness to less negative ends. For all the grimness of this period of her life, her letters offer "joie de vivre" and lively frankness - a record of a "modern" woman and her time. The letters are edited here without cuts and revisions by Middleton Murry.