SOURCE: “Katherine Mansfield's Encounter with Theocritus,” in English, Vol. XXIII, No. 115, Spring, 1974, pp. 13-19.

In the following essay, Beachcroft considers the impact that the “XV Idyll” (known as the “Adoniazusae”) had on Katherine Mansfield's short stories.

That Katherine Mansfield had at one time read a translation of the “XVth Idyll” of Theocritus and had given it considerable thought may not at first glance seem a very important piece of information. Yet it has a remarkable interest in the development of her own art and thus of the modern short story; and when Antony Alpers, author of Katherine Mansfield (1954), wrote to tell me that in the course of writing a new biography dealing with Katherine Mansfield and her circle he had discovered evidence of this encounter between Katherine Mansfield and Theocritus, it had the same effect as the discovery of an important piece that had been missing from the...