Tracing Garden Networks: Katherine Mansfield and Elizabeth von Arnim

Investigating the connections between Mansfield and von Arnim, as well as ways that they differed in the style, enables us to appreciate a diverse set of creative attachments that early 20 th century women writers made to the natural world. As Mansfield’s older cousin, von Arnim offered an example of a successful woman writer with her novel, Elizabeth in her German Garden . This essay finds an international set of gardens in the experience and writing of both authors, as well as sensitivity to gender, class and national attitudes reflected in garden settings. While Mansfield’s style was decidedly more modernist in its imagery and psychology, both authors constructed floral catalogues and used garden settings in characterisation, often to humorous effect. The two join other women writers of their era in their love of gardens, using references to flowers, and offerings of them, both to network and to express their regard for one another.