Poems

1923

Brasch PR9640 M35 P6

London: Constable & Co.

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) is perhaps New Zealand’s most famous export, a modernist poet and short story writer who made her name in Europe with works such as Je ne parle pas francais, Bliss and Other Short Stories, and The Garden Party. Extrapulmonary tuberculosis claimed her life at the early age of 34. Her husband, John Middleton Murray, was quick to forge his own version of Mansfield. Shortly after she died, he culled text from 53 notebooks and masses of unbound papers, she left behind, to form Poems (1923). ‘To L.H.B.’ was a poem written about her brother, Leslie Heron Beauchamp, who died on 6 October 1915, when a grenade malfunctioned while he was instructing troops.