Abstract
This essay considers the relationship between Floryan Sobieniowski and Katherine Mansfield whilst attempting to reconstruct one of the more obscure periods of Mansfield’s life. She made deliberate and sustained efforts to destroy personal papers from the years 1909–10 — a difficult and painful period — and, as a result, biographers have had very little material evidence to work on when trying to piece together her exact movements during this time. Supposition and guesswork must necessarily replace hard facts. However, we do have a tantalising glimpse of Mansfield’s life at this time through an intriguing file of letters accumulated by George Bowden — and therefore not personally destroyed by her — deposited in the Alexander Turnbull Library in 1986. The documents include three letters written by Sobieniowski, two letters written by Mansfield to unknown recipients, most likely Ida Baker, and a letter to Mansfield from her friend Vera French, all of them written during this frustrating void of tangible biographical evidence. In addition, another item with biographical relevance has only recently come to light: a hitherto unknown complete story ‘A Little Episode’, written by Mansfield in the late spring of 1909, whose plot also sheds new light on this obscure period.1
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Notes
For a full account of the story’s discovery, see Chris Mourant, ‘“A Little Episode”: The Forgotten Typescripts of Katherine Mansfield, 1908–1911’, in Janet Wilson, Gerri Kimber and Delia da Sousa Correa, eds, Katherine Mansfield and the (Post)colonial, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), pp. 154–63.
Antony Alpers, The Life of Katherine Mansfield (London: Jonathan Cape, 1980), p. 89.
Margaret Scott, ed., The Katherine Mansfield Notebooks, 2 vols (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), Vol. 2, p. 58. Hereafter referred to as Notebooks, followed by volume and page number.
Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott, eds, The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984–2008) Vol. 1, pp. 89–90.
Ruth Elvish Mantz, The Life of Katherine Mansfield (London: Constable, 1933).
Jeffrey Meyers, ‘Katherine Mansfield’s “To Stanisław Wyspiański”’, Modern Fiction Studies, Autumn, 23: 4, 1978, pp. 337–41, p. 338.
See Kathleen Jones, Katherine Mansfield: The Storyteller (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), p. 125.
John Middleton Murry, Between Two Worlds (London: Jonathan Cape, 1935), p. 233.
Tymon Terlecki, ‘Polski inspirator Katherine Mansfield’ (‘A Polish Inspirer of Katherine Mansfield)’, Ruch Literacki, XII, 3: 66 (1971), pp. 169–76.
Leon Schildenfeld Schiller, ‘Wyspianski w literaturach zachodnio-europejskich’ (‘Wyspianski in West-European Literatures’), Krytyka, XIV, v. XXXVI (1912), pp. 301–11.
Zbigniew Lisowski, ‘Katherine Mansfield w holdzie Wyspianskiemu’ (‘Katherine Mansfield’s Tribute to Wyspianski’), Ruch Literacki XIII, 4: 73, 1972, pp. 221–6.
Cherry A. Hankin, ed., Letters of John Middleton Murry to Katherine Mansfield (New York: Franklin Watts, 1983), p. 24.
Claire Tomalin, Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life (London: Viking, 1987), p. 159.
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© 2015 Gerri Kimber
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Kimber, G. (2015). ‘That Pole outside our door’: Floryan Sobieniowski and Katherine Mansfield. In: Kascakova, J., Kimber, G. (eds) Katherine Mansfield and Continental Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137429971_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137429971_5
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