Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 3

Volume 3 of the new authoritative edition of Katherine Mansfield's complete correspondence Provides accurate transcriptions that shed new light on the everyday, intimate world of Mansfield as a letter-writer Presents all Mansfield's letters to John Middleton Murry from 1912 to 1918, foregrounding their years of intellectual apprenticeship and the impact of war, political upheavals and ill-health on their social and cultural environment Provides meticulous explanatory notes and rich contextual information Offers extensive attention to the cultural and socio-political context of the correspondence Unlike the first two volumes of this new edition of Katherine Mansfield's letters, which encompassed a dazzling variety of correspondents, this third volume focuses exclusively on letters to John Middleton Murry, chronologically arranged, from the day when he first became her lodger in 1912 through to the week after the Armistice in November 1918, when they were newly married. It is no exaggeration to say that over the course of these six years, their entire world was turned upside down. By the time the volume closes, they are married but already increasingly estranged; they have both become professional writers but grapple with increasing economic precarity; Europe lies ravaged by war; and the devastating diagnosis of tuberculosis has been pronounced, not, ironically, for Murry whose fragile health had preoccupied them for two years, but for Mansfield herself. This volume of letters documents the whole spectrum of changes, against a vivid historical and socio-cultural backcloth and contains entirely new, insightful and extensive annotations. A second volume of letters between the pair completes the edition.

Claire Davison is Professor of Modernist Studies at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris. Gerri Kimber is Visiting Professor in the Department of English at the University of Northampton. She is co-editor of Katherine Mansfield Studies, and the author of Katherine Mansfield: A Hidden Life (2025), Katherine Mansfield – The Early Years (2016), Katherine Mansfield and the Art of the Short Story (2015), and Katherine Mansfield: The View from France (2008). She is the Series Editor of the 4-volume Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield (2012–16). Together with Claire Davison, she has edited the 4-volume edition of Katherine Mansfield’s complete letters for EUP (2020–25).