Kathleen Jones

The compelling and intimate story of one of the world's foremost short story writers

Weaving together intimate details from Katherine Mansfield's letters and journals with the writings of her friends and acquaintances, Kathleen Jones creates a captivating drama of this fragile yet feisty author: her life, loves and passion for writing. The story takes us beyond Mansfield's death in 1923 to explore the life of her husband, John Middleton Murry - and his relationship with three further wives - as he manipulated the posthumous publication of Mansfield's unpublished work. In this vivid portrayal of one of the world's foremost short story writers, the first new biography for a quarter of a century, Kathleen Jones crafts an intriguing narrative of Katherine Mansfield's relationships, illnesses and creativity.

Christina was the youngest of the four Rossetti children, born in England to Italian parents. Although she and her brother, the artist Dante Gabriel, were known as the 'two storms', Christina's passionate nature was curbed in a way that her brother's was not, as she submitted to the social and religious pressures that lay so heavily on Victorian women. Kathleen Jones looks at Christina’s life alongside that of other nineteenth-century women writers – notably Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson.

The Lake Poets - Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey - give a romantic view of the Lake District. But for their sisters, wives and daughters the view was very different. Their letters and journals all contribute to an understanding of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey as fallible human beings.