CELEBRATION OF NZ'S INTERNATIONALLY

BEST-KNOWN LITERARY FIGURE

It is 120 years since the birth of Katherine Mansfield and 85 years since she died.To mark these anniversaries Random House NZ are publishing this week a most handsome, flexi-bound volume (688 pages!) comprising a complete collection of her finished stories taken from her five books plus two unfinished stories.

KM is something of a literary phenomenon and I guess no other NZ writer gets anywhere near her in terms of international recognition. Janet Frame and Margaret Mahy would probably come in at numbers two and three but really Manfield is way out on her own. Her writing continues to be studied at universities around the globe. NZ Mansfield scholars Vincent O'Sullivan and Margaret Scott published her collected letters while Margaret Scott published her collected notebooks.

Three volumes of her stories appeared in her lifetime, her work has been translated into 26 languages, and in 1988 on the centennial of her birth, five international conferences focussed on her life and work.

Everyone with an interest in NZ literature should own the Mansfield stories so here is an opportunity to have them all in one appealing volume. Random House has done a us a great favour with this new publication. Katherine Mansfield's Short Stories, at the great price of $35.

The splendid, and somehow superbly approriate cover art, is by London-based Auckland artist Emily Wolfe. For some strange reason when I upload the cover the typography disappears! My apologies to those concerned.