Katherine Mansfield was born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp in Wellington, New Zealand, October 14, 1888. She began writing at a young age, and her stories appeared in school publications when she was only nine years old. From a prosperous family, Mansfield was sent to school in England while still a teenager. She published stories in the Queen's College Magazine. After the completion of her education, she returned to New Zealand, but Mansfield found life in her native country unexciting and provincial. She longed to return to England, and she eventually persuaded her parents to allow her to go back as well as provide her a small allowance. Thus, at nineteen she made her home in England. After a hasty and short-lived marriage, Mansfield went to a German health spa, where she got the ideas for many of the stories that comprised her first collection, In a German Pension (1911). These...