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‘To Hell with the Blooms Berries’: Katherine Mansfield in Mansfield and the poetry of C.K. Stead

Kimber, G. (2011) ‘To Hell with the Blooms Berries’: Katherine Mansfield in Mansfield and the poetry of C.K. Stead. Paper presented to: Bloomsbury Adaptations, Bath Spa University, 05-06 May 2011. (Unpublished)

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Abstract: This paper will consider the character of Katherine Mansfield as portrayed in the novel Mansfield by C.K. Stead (2004), together with her influence on Stead’s poetry. In 1972, Stead was the third recipient of the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship at Menton, which enabled him to spend eight months in the South of France, working at the Villa Isola Bella, once the home of Mansfield. During this visit, Stead took the opportunity of re-reading all of the Mansfield primary texts published at that time, which led directly to the publication some years later of his Letters and Journals of Katherine Mansfield: A Selection (1977). This immersion in ‘all things Mansfield’ initiated Stead’s fascination with KM, which would ultimately lead to the writing of Mansfield. Stead set Mansfield during three years from 1915-1918, a fascinating period in Mansfield’s life when she found her true voice as an author, was still in “reasonably good health”, and which was, as he points out, was “the time of her most intense engagement with an extraordinary cast of characters on the English literary scene”, including the Lawrences and the Bloomsbury group. It was also the period of the Great War, which would profoundly affect and influence the lives of Mansfield and her contemporaries. The paper will also consider two poems by Stead, ‘Jealousy 1’ and ‘Jealousy 2’, based on two real life incidents between Mansfield, T. S. and Vivienne Eliot, and Virginia Woolf
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PR English literature > PR8309 English literature: Provincial, local, etc. > PR9639.3 New Zealand literature
Creators: Kimber, Gerri
Faculties, Divisions and Institutes: University Faculties, Divisions and Research Centres - OLD > Faculty of Education & Humanities > English and Creative Writing
University Faculties, Divisions and Research Centres - OLD > Research Centre > Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
Faculties > Faculty of Education & Humanities > English and Creative Writing
Research Centres > Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
Date: May 2011
Date Type: Presentation
Event Title: Bloomsbury Adaptations
Event Dates: 05-06 May 2011
Event Location: Bath Spa University
Event Type: Conference
Language: English
Status: Unpublished
Refereed: No
URI: http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/id/eprint/4921

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