Mansfield

Over three years of the First World War, Katherine, a short-story writer from New Zealand, leads an unsettled life between London and France. Her relationship with John Middleton Murry is on and off, and at a low point she crosses to the front to stay briefly with her French lover, the novelist Francis Carco. Her brother Leslie arrives from New Zealand to train as a soldier, and Murry's friend Fred Goodyear, also in uniform, grows close to her. Chapters shift between their points of view and those of Frieda Lawrence and Dora Carrington, while D. H. Lawrence, at work on Women in Love, and figures such as T. S. Eliot and Bertrand Russell pass through. All the while she is trying to find a way of writing equal to the age.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Historical, War (assigned by AI)

Set in

United Kingdom, France, First World War

First published

2004

Author's age

72 when first published

ISBN

9781843431763 (Harvill Press, United Kingdom)

9780099468653 (Vintage, United Kingdom)

9780099565239 (Vintage, United Kingdom)