Virginia Woolf to Janet Case, 20 March 1922:
'Literature still survives. I've not read K. Mansfield [The Garden Party], and don't mean to. I've
read Bliss; and it was so brilliant, -- so hard, and so shallow, and so sentimental that I had to
rush to the bookcase for something to drink. Shakespeare, Conrad, even Virginia Woolf.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
7 August 1918: 'Our excitement [has been] the return of the servants from Lewes last night,
with [...] the English review for me, with [...] Katherine Mansfield on Bliss. I threw down Bliss
with the exclamation, "She's done for!" Indeed I don't see how much faith in her as as woman
or writer can survive that sort of story [...] her mind is a very thin soil, laid an inch or two
upon very barren rock [...] she is content with superficial smartness; & the whole conception
is poor, cheap, not the vision, however imperfect, of an interesting mind. She writes badly
too. And the effect was as I say, to give me an impression of her callousness & hardness as a
human being. I shall read it again; but I dont suppose I shall change.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Serial / periodical
Tuesday 25 January 1921: 'K. M. (as the papers call her) swims from triumph to triumph in the reviews; save that [J. C.] Squire doubts her genius -- so, I'm afraid, do I. These little points, though so cleanly collected, don't amount to much, I think. I read her at the Club last night'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Unknown
Thursday 15 September 1921: 'I have been dabbling in K.M.'s stories, & have to rinse my mind -- in Dryden? Still, if she were not so clever she coudn't be so disagreeable.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Unknown
Tuesday 22 August 1922: ''Boen [Hawkesford] came to tea on Sunday [...] She is changing; reading Bliss under [Edward] Shanks' orders'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Boen Hawkesford Print: Book
Sunday 26 May 1935: 'I'm writing at Aix-en-Provence on a Sunday evening [...] I'm dipping into K.M.'s letters, Stendhal on Rome [...] Cant formulate a phrase for K.M. All I think a little posed & twisted by illness & [John Middleton] Murry; but agonised, & at moments that direct flick at the thing seen which was her gift.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'I feel a curious kinship with, dislike of, yet pity for Katherine Mansfield, whose letters I am reading again. I see all my weaknesses in her, admire her for her frantic attempts to be honest and deal with them. I can now read her, feeling her equal not an awestruck inferior as I used to. I know all she knew.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book
'Sydney [Larkin's father] gave him free run of his library and his appetite for books grew enormously. "Thanks to my father", he wrote later: "our house contained not only the principal works of most main English writers in some form or other (admittedly there were exceptions, like Dickens), but also nearly-complete collections of authors my father favoured - Hardy, Bennett, Wilde, Butler and Shaw, and later on Lawrence, Huxley and Katherine Mansfield".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Larkin Print: Book
'This "new direction" [in literature], Larkin was beginning to realize, would depend on subtlety as well as candour - the sort of approach he was learning to associate with other writers he now re-read, or read for the first time. With Henry Green and Virginia Woolf (he admired "The Waves"); with Julian Hall, whose novel of public school life "The Senior Commoner" he approved for its "general atmosphere of not shoing one's feelings in public"; and with Katherine Mansfield. "I do admire her a great deal", he told Sutton, "and feel very close to her in some things".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin Print: Book
The Lawrence is magnificent. Pity he is falling more & more into the trick of repeating a word or a phrase. It irritates the reader & enfeebles the sturff. Also the connection between trees & human beings is not very strong. But really this article is the goods. The Tomlinson article is also magnificent. Not better stuff than this is being done. The K.M. story is excellently characteristic. Mr. Joiner is good; it halts at the beginning. . . . I think the number is simply splendid—especially for a first number. & you are to be seriously & gravely congratulated upon it.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Serial / periodical
'Katherine Mansfield is a cunt, but I share a hell of a lot of common characteristics with her. I should like to read her letters again. The trouble with her seems to be that she luxuriated in emotion far too much. Admittedly the head is an evil thing & I'm a tied-up bugger, but anyone who can spew out their dearest and closest thoughts, hopes, and loves to J. M. Murry must be a bit of an anus.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin
