The Diaries of Katherine Mansfield

Margaret Scott's two-volume edition of the Notebooks published in 1997 is a remarkable achievement, given the difficulty of transcribing Mansfield's notorious handwriting, and all Mansfield scholars remain forever in Scott's debt. However, one recurring criticism is that Mansfield's diary entries and loose papers which comprise the edition are not transcribed in chronological order. As Mansfield frequently re-used notebooks and diaries within a time span of several years, the result in the published Notebooks is that diary entries for a specific year do not necessarily follow sequentially. This edition remaps all the entries in the Notebooks not used in the Collected Fiction volumes, and presents the material in chronological order, with annotations. This edition provides a fascinating, chronological account of Mansfield's life, as she wrote it and Mansfield will be read differently and far more accurately as a result.