Birds bred in cages : Katherine Mansfield and the anxiety of authority

Abstract

This thesis accounts for the growing professionalisation of Katherine Mansfield as a writer between the years of 1910 and 1922, and addresses the ways in which the publication contexts in which her writing first appeared helped shape her career, influencing both the form and content of her literary output. The modes of periodical and book publication with which she engaged over the course of her professional life were vital to her development as an author, while her ongoing negotiations with a series of audiences - editorial, critical and commercial - ultimately coloured her perception of the potentially restrictive environs in which she produced her work. This is captured in her memorable description of her stories as ‘birds bred in cages’.