Together they moved in social circles that included some of the most acclaimed English-language writers of the early twentieth century.
Mansfield was born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp in Wellington, New Zealand, to a family of English descent in 1888. Her father, Harold Beauchamp, was a successful merchant who eventually became one of the English colony's most prominent citizens, rising to the position of chair of the Bank of New Zealand. She once described her mother as "constantly suspicious, constantly overbearingly tyrannous," and from an early age Mansfield seemed resentful toward her middle-class provincial family. As a writer, she later explored the theme of the hierarchy of class distinctions that restricted upbringings such as hers. As a teenager she was sent away to a finishing school in London that was a more intellectually rigorous institution than most girls of her class attended. There she became active in its magazine, for which she wrote several short stories, and established a lifelong friendship with classmate Ida Baker. When her schooling came to an end, Mansfield returned to her family's increasingly prosperous household in Wellington, but was determined to take leave again permanently. Enrolling in secretarial and bookkeeping courses, her parents allowed her to live abroad on her own, and in 1908 she returned to London.
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