Antony Alpers (1919–1997)

As far as I know, this is still considered to be the definitive Mansfield biography. Katherine Mansfield is a writer easy to fall in love with: her short stories have a quality of naturalness and directness almost childlike in its simplicity, but are quite sophisticated with regard to innovations of technique as well: she is credited with being one of the inventors of the modern short story. Add to that a life cut tragically short by illness, various romantic complications, friendships with contemporary luminaries D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, and a world profoundly changed during the course of her life by the first World War, and you've got all the ingredients for a mesmerizing life story. Biographer Antony Alpers clearly both likes and admires his subject, and has done his homework well (this is the second of two biographies he wrote about her). Anyone interested in the transformation of literature which occurred during the early decades of the last century, as well as those who enjoy solidly researched yet deftly written literary biographies, will surely enjoy this book.… (meer)