Books

MANSFIELD, Katherine. In a German Pension. London: Stephen Swift, Nd (1911). First edition, second impression (Jan. 1912). With author's cousin's name Evelyn M. Payne/ March 1912 neatly written on ffep. Bound in original patterned green cloth, with title, author and publisher on spine in gilt and title and author on front board in gilt. Bottom edge untrimmed. Top and bottom of spine very slightly rubbed, front and end-papers slightly browned, otherwise a Fine copy for age. Notes: The collection was originally published in December 1911 by Stephen Swift & Co Ltd; the imprint of Charles Granville the publisher of Rhythm. The first impression of probably 500 copies was followed by two more impressions of 500 copies in January and in May or June 1912. In early October 1912 Granville absconded to Algiers, and his firm was liquidated. A story that copies for America went down with the Titanic in April 1912 is probably not true. Mansfield refused permission for a reprint of the collection in 1920, both as they were juvenilia and they could contribute to post-war jingoism. In 1926 after her death her husband John Middleton Murry reprinted them. Alpers says that Mansfield is famous for just two books . an earlier one (In a German Pension) being happily forgotten; the two books being Bliss and Other Stories and The Garden Party . (Alpers, Antony, ed. (1984). The Stories of Katherine Mansfield. Auckland: Oxford University Press.) The stories were written after her stay in Bad W�rishofen, a German spa town, in 1909, where she was taken by her mother after her disastrous marriage, pregnancy and miscarriage. Evelyn and Sylvia Payne were Kathleen Beauchamp's (Katherine Mansfield) cousins. It was on the recommendation of their father, Katherine's mother Annie's cousin, Joseph Frank Payne, a physician in Wimpole Street, whose own daughters were all happily enrolled at Queen's College that Katherine s parents decided to enrol their three girls there, when they arrived from New Zealand in Spring 1903. Evelyn who was slightly older than Katherine, left Queen s College in the summer of 1903 to study at the all-female Oxford College, Lady Margaret Hall. In the Life of Katherine Mansfield by J. Middleton Murry Evelyn is mentioned in the following extract: 'One who knew her well could instantly recognise her state by the appearance of her page . . . Her handwriting, that first college year, and her notebooks, were the despair of her sponsor, Evelyn Payne, who wrote precisely, like printed script, while Kathleen's pen streaked across the page at lightning speed to keep pace with her thoughts, her principal mark of punctuation being always the dash. But Evelyn found herself unable to impress her cousin who was going her own way, evolving standards for herself showing a scornful pride when these standards were threatened. (pp.181) The younger Sylvia, Evelyn Payne's sister was perhaps closer to Katherine both in temperament and certainly in age. Katherine writing to Sylvia on 23 December 1903 says: I like you much more than any other girl I have met in England & I seem to see less and less of you. We just stand upon the thresholds of each other's heart and never get right in. What I mean by heart is just this. My heart is a place where everything I love (whether it be in imagination or in truth) has a free entrance . . .' Later Katherine would immortalise Sylvia in one of her most celebrated stories The Daughters of the Late Colonel as Josephine.

In a German Pension is a collection of short stories by the New Zealand modernist writer Katherine Mansfield. It was her first published collection of short stories, and it describes the experiences of a young Englishwoman staying at a health resort in Germany.