Collected Poems of Katherine Mansfield, The

This is the first complete edition of Katherine Mansfield’s poetry, including 26 poems, dating from 1909-10, discovered by Gerri Kimber in the Newberry Library in Chicago in 2015. This edition is made up of 217 poems, ordered chronologically, so that the reader can follow Mansfield’s development as a poet and her experiments with different forms, as well as tracing the themes - love and death, the natural world and the seasons, childhood and friendship, music and song - that preoccupied her throughout her writing life. The comprehensive annotations provide illuminating biographical information as well as explaining the rich contexts of the European poetic tradition, including fin de siecle decadence within which Mansfield’s artistry is steeped. The inclusion of a collection of newly discovered poems, highlights Mansfield’s desire to be taken seriously as a poet from her earliest beginnings as a writer. The poems as a whole point to a poet who varied her craft as she perfected it, often witty and ironic yet always enchanted by the sound of words.