'Gerri Kimber is to be congratulated on her meticulous research: her illuminating, elegantly written account of Katherine Mansfield's early years will give scholars and literary enthusiasts alike far greater understanding and appreciation of Mansfield's mature work.' Professor Dame Jacqueline Wilson, Patron of the Katherine Mansfield Society A new biography of Katherine Mansfield's formative years illustrated with photographs never published before Focusing on the first 20 years of Katherine Mansfield's life, from her birth in 1888 to her final departure from New Zealand in 1908, this biography reveals the importance of Mansfield's childhood and teenage years to her development as a writer and offers unique insights into her New Zealand stories. Gerri Kimber draws on detailed reminiscences of Mansfield's former school friends and acquaintances, early letters, Mansfield's autograph book, notebooks and family papers as well as on previously unused archive material and photographs. Kimber illuminates Mansfield's home life and school days, her friendships, first infatuations and sexual experimentation both with young men and young women and reveals the effect Mansfield's experiences had on her earliest stories. What emerges is a fascinating picture of a feisty and imaginative young girl who would turn into an expressive, non-conformist adolescent: the unruly Kass Beauchamp who would become Katherine Mansfield, the celebrated modernist writer. Illustrated with 120 photographs. Gerri Kimber is Visiting Professor in the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Northampton. She is co-editor of Katherine Mansfield Studies and Chair of the Katherine Mansfield Society. She devised and is Series Editor of the four-volume Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield (2012-16). Cover image: Katherine Mansfield in Brussels, 1906. Ref: 1/2-162827-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, NZ Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN 978-0-7486-8145-7 Barcode