Showing results by author "Katherine Mansfield" in All Categories

Katherine Mansfield accomplishes an incredible drama with detailed characterization in "Miss Brill", a story only four pages long, written in the early 1920's. The main character is a lonely spinster, probably an elderly Englishwoman, living in a resort area of France near the seashore, earning enough to support herself by tutoring English children and reading the newspapers to an old invalid whose ability to hear and comprehend are questionable. She sits on a bench at the park and creates fantasy scenarios involving the people around her, enhanced by her eavesdropping skills.

Innovative, startlingly perceptive and aglow with colour, these 15 stories were written towards the end of Katherine Mansfield's tragically short life. Many are set in the author's native New Zealand, others in England and the French Riviera. All are revelations of the unspoken, half-understood emotions that make up everyday experience - from the blackly comic 'The Daughters of the Late Colonel' and the short, sharp sketch 'Miss Brill', in which a lonely woman's precarious sense of self is brutally destroyed, to the vivid impressionistic evocation of family life in 'At the Bay'.

In the realm of the short story, Katherine Mansfield established a highly original style. Undramatic, poetic and lyrical, her writing is exquisitely subtle in its treatment of human behaviour. When these 14 short stories were published in 1920, she had already effected a transformation in this form of fiction, and her influence has been deeply felt by subsequent writers.

The short story is considered to be one of the most challenging genres because of the need for compact plotlines and the ability to conjure up atmosphere and character in a few sentences and to engage the reader instantly. This collection presents 66 of the greatest examples of the genre - many of them well known, some hidden literary treasures, all of them exquisite examples of the short story at its finest.

A vintage collection of some of the greatest short stories ever written

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction and a close associate of D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. 'The Little Girl' is the story of a child with a strict, overbearing Victorian father. When her mother is ill and her father has to look after the little girl alone, she gets to know a different, softer, kinder side of him.

Katherine Mansfield was a master of the short story. With characters in psychological struggles resulting in a major life shift or revelation, her style influenced contemporary and friend Virginia Woolf as well as modern authors including Alice Munro. These stories were written between 1920 and 1921, while she was ill with tuberculosis. She died in 1923 at the age of 34. Fifteen stories are included in this recording.

This is a story from the Bliss & Other Stories collection.

A sparkling collection of short stories by leading female authors including “Miss Brill” by Katharine Mansfield, “The Lifted Veil” by George Eliot and “A Venetian Night's Entertainment” by Edith Wharton.

This is a story from the Classic Women's Short Stories collection.

This collection brings together stories by Edith Wharton, Katherine Mansfield, Wilkie Collins and Marcel Proust, with forays into the supernatural and the comedic by Sabine Baring-Gould and Saki. Be them funny or moving, all stories are beautifully read by Harriet Walter (Atonement, Netflix’s The Crown), Juliet Stevenson (Bend it Like Beckham, The Enfield Haunting), Barbara Leigh-Hunt (Pride and Prejudice, Billy Elliot) and Rosalind Ayres (Titanic, Outnumbered). 

The 15 stories collected in this volume demonstrate the genius of a woman who, in her own short lifetime, was compared to Chekhov. The tales are sensitive revelations of human behavior in ordinary situations.

Katherine Mansfield's heartbreaking story of playground bullying. The Kelvey children are excluded from the schoolyard crowd because they come from a poor family with more than a hint of disreputableness about them. When the Burnell children are given a doll's house and invite their school friends two by two to see it, only the Kelveys are excluded. Until one day, Kezia Burnell decides to invite the Kelveys in to see it....

This is a story from the Bliss & Other Stories collection.

A great collection of short stories based on the theme of love. Stories by famous writers including Katherine Mansfield and Oscar Wilde.

This is a story from the Bliss & Other Stories collection.

A wonderful collection of great classic love stories for the incurable romantic in all of us. "The Scrupulous Father" by George Gissing, "The Marquise" by George Sand, "Her Lover" by Maxim Gorky, "A Long-Ago Affair" by John Galsworthy, "A Dill Pickle" by Katherine Mansfield, "Portrait of a Lady" by Jerome K. Jerome, "The Pig and Whistle" by George Gissing, "A Race for a Bride" by H. K. Hales, "The Christmas Tree and the Wedding" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, "The Girl Who Was Tired of Love" by Leonard Merrick...

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction and a close associate of D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. The Apple Tree is a delightful story narrated from the perspective of a child whose father discovers that he has a rare and valuable apple tree growing in his orchard. The family wait impatiently for the first crop of the magical and splendid apples. Finally the day arrives when they can taste the wonderful red fruits...

In the realm of narrative literature, the appeal of the short story is that it provides nearly immediate satisfaction. Here is a collection of wonderful classic short stories by such great authors as Saki, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield and Kate Chopin.

This is a story from the Classic Women's Short Stories collection.