'Few publications have declared, with such vigour or such clarity, that rather remarkable rise in Katherine Mansfield's reputation over the last two decades, her moving from her slot as minor writer to a central role in Modernism, as does this fresh collection of essays by younger scholars. 'The most emblematic woman writer of her time,' the New York Times Book Review has called her. These essays take up the challenge to ask why and how this is so, as they read her with flair and depth against the literary and philosophical currents where she now takes her place. We can no longer consider twentieth-century writing without Mansfield among its key figures, her fiction and letters among its enduring texts.'

Vincent O' Sullivan, co-editor of The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield

This is a valuable contribution to the fast growing canon of Mansfield studies,approaching her work with sensitive analysis, and a strong, historical background.

Katherine Mansfield Studies

The volume, then, is aseries of cohesive and scholarly essays, bringing a refreshing newinternational range of voices to the sphere of Mansfield criticism andincluding a comprehensive index. A very welcome addition to this rapidlydeveloping field.

Cambridge Quarterly, vol 40, no 4

This collection of wide-ranging and stimulating essays attests to the renewed and burgeoning interest in the work of Katherine Mansfield... the sophisticated and innovative analyses offered in this collection stand as a fitting tribute to a writer who herself was intent on exploring 'what lies beneath the rich strange surfaces'. This collection not only sheds a new light on a writer frequently sidelined in critical work in modernist studies, but importantly opens a clear pathway for further re-evaluation of Mansfield's role in the production of British modernism and our understandings of its many complexities.

Review of English Studies

'[This book] reads Mansfield's work through diverse theoretical lenses and in tandem with a range of contemporaneous movements; [it] features essays that make good use of the life writings recently made available to critics.' -Woolf Studies Annual