Katherine Mansfield and the (post)colonial

In this book, Mansfield’s writing is repositioned as both postcolonial and diasporic. This volume addresses issues raised by Katherine Mansfield’s nomadic rootlessness as an ‘extraterritorial’ writer, her constant movement between European countries, her impetuosity about travel, her volatility towards states of home and belonging. Most notable is her vexed relationship with New Zealand, a country from which she longed to escape as a teenager, yet yearned for connection with in her final years, declaring ‘How glad I am to have New Zealand to range about in’. Articles in this volume draw on postcolonial and diasporic frameworks to examine, in relation to Mansfield’s mobile, travelling subjecthood, her insights into colony and empire, formed from her earliest years. In repositioning Mansfield as a postcolonial/diasporic modernist, this volume also includes explorations of her influence on subsequent writers from her homeland of New Zealand and other writers in both Europe and elsewhere.This reassessment of Mansfield as an artist investigates the extent to which she anticipates postcolonial discourses in her engagement with the exploited and the outsider, and her ability to challenge cultural codes and subvert social conventions. It includes previously unpublished poetry and fiction. It reports of current research findings on Katherine Mansfield. It includes an introduction by Janet Wilson, Professor of English and Postcolonial Studies, University of Northampton. It includes reviews of recent publications on Mansfield and her contemporaries.