WORLD-FAMED NOVELIST

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19804, 21 May 1934, Page 12

WORLD-FAMED NOVELIST

It has often been said that Katherine Mansfield, the New Zealand girl whom Galsworthy called the best short story writer of her time, has a more loyal following in many foreign countries than she has in her own. A recent instance emphasises this fact in a striking way. Some time ago a Japanese writer travelled all the way to New Zealand specially to glean something about her early life for translation into Japanese. On his arrival in Wellington he searched the town to find a memorial to Katherine Mansfield and, faillijg to find one, he sought out her father, Sir Harold Beauchamp, and asked him:— “Has not New Zealand erected a statue of the most famous literary figure it has yet produced?” The question had to be answered in the negative. Since then, however. Sir Harold himself has built a rest-house to her memory in a public garden. Katherine Mansfield’s works are well-known not only in Japan but also in China, where countless educated Chinese have read her stories and her journal In their own language.