SOURCE: Peterson, Richard F. “The Circle of Truth: The Stories of Katherine Mansfield and Mary Lavin.” Modern Fiction Studies 24, no. 3 (1978): 383-94.

In the following essay, Peterson elucidates the influence of Katherine Mansfield's short stories on Lavin's short fiction.

Katherine Mansfield wrote in her journal that honesty “is the only thing one seems to prize beyond life, love, death, everything. It alone remaineth. O you who come after me, will you believe it? At the end truth is the only thing worth having: it's more thrilling than love, more joyful and more passionate. It simply can not fail.”¹ Mary Lavin, one of the short-story writers who came after Katherine Mansfield and became one of her admirers, found a standard for fiction in Mansfield's quest for the truth. In some unpublished and undated notes for an essay on the art of the short story,² she states her own belief that...