75 Books Challenge for 2015 : ANZAC Author Reading Challenge 2015-Christina Stead (AUS) & Katherine Mansfield (NZ) (May)

This month we have two women from the first part of the twentieth century.
Both of these women share the dubious distinction of being 'discovered' overseas, a long time before being recognised at home.

Christina Stead (17 July 1902 – 31 March 1983) was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterisations.

Stead wrote 15 novels and several volumes of short stories in her lifetime. She taught “Workshop in the Novel” at New York University in 1943 and 1944, and also worked as a Hollywood screenwriter in the 1940s contributing to the Madame Curie biopic and the John Ford and John Wayne war movie, They Were Expendable.

Stead’s best-known novel, ironically titled The Man Who Loved Children, is largely based on her own childhood, and was first published in 1940. It was not until the poet Randall Jarrell wrote the introduction for a new American edition in 1965 that the novel began to receive a larger audience. In 2005, the magazine Time included this work in their “100 Best Novels from 1923–2005,” and in 2010 American author Jonathan Franzen hailed the novel as a “masterpiece” in The New York Times.

Stead seems to have caught the attention of writers, but has been largely unknown to the great reading public.

A literary prize in in her name is awarded each year by the NSW Premier's Literary Awards.

Katherine Mansfield (14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand.

She was the subject of the 1973 BBC miniseries A Picture of Katherine Mansfield starring Vanessa Redgrave. The six-part series included adaptations of Mansfield’s life and of her short stories.

Mansfield's Bliss and Other Stories was a set text when I did English Literature at high school, pointing to her position as one of the staples of Anglophone literature. Her association with members of the Bloomsbury group, including Virginia Woolfe also make her an interest character.

Christina Stead - Novels
Seven Poor Men of Sydney (1934)

The Beauties and Furies (1936)

House of all Nations (1938)

The Man Who Loved Children (1940)

For Love Alone (1945)

Modern Women in Love (1945) edited with William J. Blake

Letty Fox: Her Luck (1946)

A Little Tea. A Little Chat (1948)

The People with the Dogs (1952)

Dark Places of the Heart (1966)

Cotters’ England (1967)

The Little Hotel: A Novel (1973)

Miss Herbert: The Suburban Wife (1976)

I’m Dying Laughing: The Humourist (1986)

The Palace With Several Sides: A Sort of Love Story (1986)

Katherine Mansfield

In a German Pension (1911)

Bliss: and Other Stories (1920)

The Garden Party: and Other Stories (1922)

The Doves’ Nest: and Other Stories (1923)

The Montana Stories (1923)

Poems (1923)

Something Childish (1924)

You might be interested to read this review of The Man Who Loved Children that appeared in The Monthly a few years ago.

The review was written by one of our March authors, Michelle De Krester.

I'm going to read The man who loved children. I read a review somewhere that warned readers not to start with Randall Jarrell's introduction to the Penguin Modern Classic edition as it contains a big spoiler.

Not sure if i'll have time for any Mansfield though have read some of her stories before. Here's a 5 min clip from the film, Bliss: The Beginning of Katherine Mansfield: http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/bliss-2011

I'll be reading The Garden Party: and Other Stories.

It'll be The Man Who Loved Children for me Jacqui and hopefully finishing off De Krester and Duff as I am behind more than usual.

>7 avatiakh: Thanks for the clip.

>8 LoisB: I read that last year. There were some really amazing stories and some odd ones, but it felt like a fairly comprehensive collection.

For the Mansfield, I am going to try In a German Pension.

I am mostly repulsed by the descriptions of the Stead books, so I think I'll give her a pass. I will watch all of your reviews and see if I change my mind. lol

I finished The Garden Party and Other Stories. I was not impressed. Rather than stories, I would call them vignettes - they were missing a key element of a story - the plot!

I've started The Man Who Loved Children. I'm only 30 pages in, and it is a bit of a tome, but so far I'm enjoying it. I was disappointed when my train arrived at my destination this morning- because I had to stop reading. It is very modern in style, I keep having to remind myself that it was first published in 1940, not last week.

I started The man who loved children at the end of May and slowly have made my way through the book, reading the last 220pgs in the last two days. I found it difficult, the parents are so unlikeable, almost no redeeming traits at all. Anyway the last half of the book was more palatable once the family moved to Annapolis.
This evening I'm going to read the introduction essay by Randall Jarrell. I have to say my Penguin paperback has the most revolting cover of all time.

I came across a fascinating essay by Jane Smiley on Stead's book: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jun/10/featuresreviews.guardianreview29