About Katherine Mansfield: Today Blog

What was KM thinking and writing 90 years ago today? The 'KM: Today' blog posts daily extracts of her letters  and notebooks written almost 90 years ago, offering a unique perspective on the writer’s life via a medium as thoroughly ‘modern’ as KM herself. Although her diaries were “really private” (“I don’t mean that any eye but mine should read this” ), KM intended to write up “a kind of minute notebook, to be published some day”. While we can only speculate about what this notebook might have contained, the ‘KM blog’ provides an opportunity for readers, 90 years on, to respond anew to her personal writings and to redraw a Katherine Mansfield for the twenty-first century. We hope these personal writings, viewed in this way for the first time, with annotations of the people and places in the texts, will refresh the memories of the KM devotee and attract those new to her writing for the first time.

The blog will start with the year 1920, since that is the most comprehensive in terms of material. We hope then to carry on through until her death in 1923. Ultimately, our aim will be to retrace her personal writing from the earlier years and to create a patchwork of personal writing where there are chronological gaps, but this will take time  - and further funding!

We encourage interactive use – please post your comments at the end of each daily entry.

Acknowledgements

The Katherine Mansfield Society gratefully acknowledges the support of all of the following, who have made this project possible:

• The Southern Trust, who generously gave the Society a grant to fund work on the project
• The Society of Authors as literary representatives of the Estate of Katherine Mansfield for generously allowing the Society to use copyright material
• Reuben Williams, whose technical expertise brought the whole project to life
• Paul Reynolds, who provided both the initial idea and  invaluable advice at the start of the project
• The ‘blog’ team: Tracey Macleod, Sue Reid, Sarah Sandley