*BOTH CREATIVE AND CRITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS WELCOME*CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR VOLUME 16 OF
Katherine Mansfield Studies
THE PEER-REVIEWED YEARBOOK OF THE KATHERINE MANSFIELD SOCIETY
PUBLISHED BY EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS
on the theme ofKatherine Mansfield and LondonEditors
Dr Aimée Gasston and Dr Gerri KimberKatherine Mansfield’s complicated relationship with London began in 1903, when her parents sent her and her two older sisters from New Zealand to Queen’s College in Harley Street to be educated, and where they remained until the summer of 1906. By now a wealthy businessman, her father Harold Beauchamp felt there was no better way to show Wellington society how far his star had risen. In his opinion, New Zealand could not offer the necessary cultural stimulus for his daughters. Had he known how much ‘stimulation’ London would have engendered in his third daughter, however, he might well have reconsidered. Back in Wellington, Mansfield longed for the sights and sounds of the great metropolis, and became miserable and difficult, writing to her cousin, Sylvia Payne:
my heart keeps flying off – Oxford Circus – Westminster Bridge at the Whistler hour – London by hansom – my old room […]. It haunts me all so much – and I feel it must come back soon – How people ever wish to live here I cannot think […] Tonight I feel too utterly hopelessly full of heimweh. If you knew how I hunger for it all.Eventually worn down, her parents agreed to her returning to London to forge a career as a writer, no longer ‘Kathleen Beauchamp’ but ‘Katherine Mansfield’.The heady delights of being back in London soon turned to misery and despair as Mansfield’s life up to the end of 1911 became one of sexual experimentation, doomed love affairs, a still-birth, and more than one abortion. Nevertheless, once established in a relationship with John Middleton Murry, Mansfield’s life became more settled, as the literary couple soon connected with most of the writers in London, thanks to their editorship of several little magazines and their own published work. Mansfield herself now began a love/hate relationship with London, exemplified by what she perceived as her liminal position in London society, a ‘colonial’, with a father in trade. As she wrote in a notebook in 1919:
But why should the [red geraniums] make me feel a stranger? Why should they ask me every time I go near: ‘And what are you doing in a London garden?’ They burn with arrogance & pride. And I am the little colonial walking in the London garden patch – allowed to look, perhaps, but not to linger. If I lie on the grass they positively shout at me. Look at her lying on our grass, pretending she lives here, pretending this is her garden & that tall back of the house with the windows open & the coloured curtains lifting is her house. She is a stranger – an alien.
As the symptoms of her tuberculosis increased, and she spent more and more time away from England, seeking a healthier climate, life in London became a series of brief sojourns. London remained, however, at the heart of her literary life until her early death.
Essays which address any aspect of Mansfield and London will be considered for this volume. Subjects might include (but are not limited to):
• Mansfield and the metropolis
• Mansfield and Literary London
• Mansfield and the Bloomsbury Group
• Mansfield’s London residences
• Mansfield and Queen’s College
• Mansfield’s stories set in London
• Mansfield and psychogeography
• Mansfield as flâneuse
• Mansfield and the little magazines Please email submissions of c. 6000 words, including endnotes, formatted in Word and in MHRA style*, 12 pt. Times New Roman, double line-spaced, with a 100-word abstract + 5 keywords & 50-word biography, to the editorial team at kms@katherinemansfieldsociety.org

PLEASE NOTE: ALL SUBMISSIONS WILL AUTOMATICALLY BE ENTERED FOR OUR ANNUAL ESSAY PRIZE COMPETITION UNLESS AUTHORS INDICATE OTHERWISE.
*An MHRA Style Guide is available on the Katherine Mansfield Society website: http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/yearbook-katherine-mansfield-studies/Creative Writing
We welcome creative submissions of poetry, short stories, and creative essays on the general theme of Katherine Mansfield. Please send submissions for consideration, accompanied by a brief (50 words) biography, to kms@katherinemansfieldsociety.org.DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: 31 AUGUST 2023