During Katherine Mansfield's life she experienced the effects of abortion, miscarriage, gonorrhoea, peritonitis, rheumatism and tuberculosis, and would take up a peripatetic existence constantly in search of more favourable climates. The First World War of 1914-1918 and the influenza pandemic of 1918-20 informed the zeitgeist of her times. This volume of essays explores the extent to which this resonant context of disease and death shaped Mansfield's literary output and her modes of thinking. Illness both stimulated and limited Mansfield's creativity - she would write to fund her medical care while simultaneously limited by her poor health, writing in 1922: 'The real point is I shall have to make as much money as I can on my next book - my path is so dotted with doctors'. As explored in this volume, her personal writings document the increasing influence of tubercular literary predecessors such as Anton Chekhov and John Keats, while her stories function compellingly as dialogue with loved ones who have been lost - her brother, her mother, her grandmother -  endowing them with life in the process.

New scholarship on Katherine Mansfield's The Garden Party and Other Stories together with creative work inspired by Mansfield. The last collection of short stories published in her lifetime, The Garden Party and Other Stories would solidify Katherine Mansfield's place as the most prominent modernist short story writer of her generation. Early reviewers of the collection commented on the similarities it shared with her previous collection, Bliss and Other Stories; however, while contemporary reviews were mixed, many emphasised the psychological power of her stories, praising how she was able to bring her characters to life in a way simple action could not. While it contains some of Mansfield's most sophisticated and well-loved stories, several of the stories in The Garden Party initially appeared in the Sphere, and thus were often dismissed as inferior. Mansfield herself felt some of these stories fell short of her desired effect, though recent scholarship has revealed their greater complexity. The essays in this volume, by both seasoned and newer Mansfield scholars, work to continue this conversation. The collection also includes Mansfield-inspired short fiction, two translations of memorial poems dedicated to Mansfield by Chinese and French contemporaries with accompanying notes, and a recently re-discovered book review by Mansfield. In addition, Sydney Janet Kaplan provides a reflection on her personal meeting with Christopher Isherwood, a writer heavily influenced by the life and work of Mansfield.

This volume presents essays that engage with many aspects of Mansfield's response to all things Russian as well as to the Russians she met in England and France. In addition, the volume presents a collection of images of Gurdjieff's Institute at Fontainebleau, several of which have never been seen before.