Katherine Mansfield was a New Zealand writer and critic who became an important figure in the modernist movement. Born in Wellington, she left for England at nineteen, where she became a friend of D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, and she wrote short stories and poetry that explore anxiety, sexuality and a developing New Zealand identity. Her books include Bliss and Garden Party, and the title story of Bliss follows Bertha Young through an ordinary dinner party that becomes a moment of sudden, overwhelming joy. Mansfield died in France in 1923, aged 34.
