Book description
Katherine Mansfield is the celebrated biography be
bestselling author Claire Tomalin
'One of the best biographies I have ever read: a perfect match of
author and subject. It should become a classic' Alison Lurie
Pursuing art and adventure across Europe, Katherine Mansfield lived
and wrote with the Furies on her heels; but when she died aged only
thirty-four she became one of the most influential writers of the
twentieth century. Sexually ambiguous, craving love yet quarrelsome
and capricious, she glittered in the brilliant circles of D. H.
Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, her beauty and recklessness inspiring
admiration, jealousy, rage and devotion. Claire Tomalin's biography
brings us nearer than we have ever been to this courageous, greatly
gifted, haunted and haunting writer.
'Generous, dispassionate, even-handed, setting out probably as
plainly as anyone ever will Katherine's high hopes, the odds she faced
and the impossible obstacles that ditched her in the end' Hilary
Spurling, Daily Telegraph
'Provides the finest and most subtly shaded portrait so far' John
Gross, New York Times
From the acclaimed author of Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled
Self, Charles Dickens: A Life and The Invisible Woman,
this virtuoso biography is invaluable reading for lovers of
Katherine Mansfield everywhere.
Claire Tomalin is the award-winning author of eight highly acclaimed
biographies, including: The Life and Death of Mary
Wollstonecraft; Shelley and His World; Katherine
Mansfield: A Secret Life; The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly
Ternan and Charles Dickens; Mrs Jordan's Profession; Jane Austen: A
Life; Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self; Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn
Man and, most recently, Charles Dickens: A Life. A former
literary editor of the New Statesman and the Sunday
Times, she is married to the playwright and novelist Michael Frayn.
Claire Tomalin was born in London in 1933. She has worked in
publishing and journalism all her life, becoming literary editor first
of the
New Statesman
and then of the
Sunday Times
, which she left in 1986. She is the author of, among other books:
The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft
;
Shelley and His World
Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life
;
The Invisible Woman
and the extraordinarily successful biography of Samuel Pepys. Other
books written for Penguin are:
Jane Austen: A Life
and a collection of memoirs entitled
Several Strangers
.
