Research casts Mansfield in a new light

A fresh interpretation of early writing by author Katherine Mansfield has not only enhanced understanding of her work, but also sheds light on an important period in New Zealand’s history.

For her Master’s in English, Victoria University of Wellington student Anna Plumridge focused on a notebook that was kept by Katherine Mansfield during a camping holiday around parts of the North Island—including the Urewera region—in 1907.

Anna’s project involved painstakingly analysing and transcribing the tiny—and very messy—diary. “The handwriting is atrocious—it’s chaotic, cryptic and in parts illegible. There are lots of entries scribbled out, funny little drawings that are hard to make sense of, parts that are upside down, and she crams several entries onto one page.

“But by reading it again I found new things—on the title page Mansfield had written out a Māori proverb which no-one had ever discovered before. It says a lot about her interest in Māori culture, which hadn’t previously been picked up.

“This was a formative time in New Zealand’s history, when Pakeha were buying up large swathes of land—Mansfield was reacting to that in quite insightful ways, which was astonishing for the era, let alone for a young woman who was just 19 at the time. It also says a lot about cultural encounter in New Zealand more generally.”

Anna says the camping trip left a lasting impression on the young author. “There’s a clear connection between this notebook and Mansfield’s story, The Woman at the Store, which was published five years later. While living in the privileged surroundings of London, she turned to her Urewera experience and wrote about these backblocks in a very gritty, realistic way.”

Following in Mansfield’s footsteps, Anna also travelled to the Urewera area. “With the help of local kaumatua I managed to track down descendants of the people Mansfield met, and go to the places she mentions in the diary.”

Anna has been contracted to publish her research with Edinburgh University Press.