Introduction: Katherine Mansfield, Illness and Death

During Katherine Mansfield’s life she experienced abortion, miscarriage, peritonitis, rheumatism and tuberculosis, and would take up a peripatetic existence constantly in search of more favourable climates. The First World War of 1914–1918 and the influenza pandemic of 1918–20 informed the zeitgeist of her times. This volume of essays explores the extent to which this resonant context of disease and death shaped Mansfield’s literary output and her modes of thinking. Illness both stimulated and limited Mansfield’s creativity: her personal writings document the increasing influence of tubercular literary predecessors such as Anton Chekhov and John Keats, while her stories function compellingly as dialogue with loved ones who have been lost – her brother, her mother, her grandmother – and endow them with life in the process.