Henry Handel Richardson: A Life Book

This is a heavy tome in many ways. For years I re-read and treasured a totally pirated edition of Journal of Katherine Mansfield, which I had re-bound last year (and the stinky printer removed the original cover, against my specific instructions to bind it in as part of the book! Not only that, they threw it away!!)

A few years ago (or perhaps many, I forget) I bought this complete edition, along with some of Mansfield's stories. It weighs about 3 pounds, and that's in paperback. Mansfield had a habit of going through her letters and papers and burning them periodically--which at the rate she moved around England and France is hardly surprising. How glad I am that she didn't actually destroy quite all of the "huge complaining diaries" that she felt took so much time away from her real work as an author. Because to be honest, I prefer her journals--but then I am a snoop by nature. I'd never read your personal notebook without permission, but I do like to read collections of letters and diaries. Mansfield's are masterly depictions of a mood, a scene, a moment, all that "external life" that she loved so much--but a great deal of her internal life as well.

The facsimiles of some pages show the enormous task the editor set herself. Mansfield's writing was by her own admission impossibly bad. Was it a way to enforce secrecy? It may have been. OTOH, it may simply be that writing with a nib and ink makes scribblers of busy people. It certainly would me, and I have nothing like her excuse. The editor manages to clarify some obscure passages, and some that J. M. Murray bowdlerised; I refuse to accept that he could misinterpret her handwriting to that degree, given the content of some of the changed texts. He either wanted to protect his own ego or Mansfield's "image."