This first complete edition of Katherine Mansfield’s poetry This edition is made up of 217 poems, ordered chronologically, so that the reader can follow Mansfield’s development as a poet and her experiments with different forms as well as trace the themes such as love and death, the natural world and the seasons, childhood and friendship, music and song which preoccupied her throughout her writing life. The comprehensive annotations provide illuminating biographical information as well as explaining the rich contexts of the European poetic tradition, including fin de siècle decadence, within which her artistry is steeped. The inclusion of a collection of newly-discovered poems, dating from 1909-10, highlights Mansfield’s desire to be taken seriously as a poet from her earliest beginnings as a writer. The poems as a whole point to a poet who varied her craft as she perfected it, often witty and ironic yet always enchanted by the sound of words.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; 1903; Collection: Little Fronds; Evening; The Sea; The Three Monarchs; Music; A Fragment; Love’s Entreaty; Night; To M ; Battle Hymn; The Chief’s Bombay Tiger; To Ping Pong by J.E.C.; To a Little Child; In the Darkness; The Springtime; To Grace; Hope; Farewell; An Escapade Undertaken by A Green Raspberry, & A Kidney Bean; Twilight; The Old Inkstand; Friendship; Friendship (2); The Song of My Lady; The Old Year and the New Year; 1904; ‘This is my world, this room of mine’; ‘Dear friend’; 1906; ‘What, think you, causes me truest Joy’; The Students’ Room; ‘To those who can understand her’; A Common Ballad; ‘I constantly am hearing’; Shadows; The [. . .] Child of the Sea; 1907; Collection: Children’s book of verse; Verses of Little Q; One Day; ‘The little boy’; ‘The sunlight shone in golden beams’; A Young Ladies Version of The Cards; The Bath Baby; ‘This is just a little song’; ‘I have a little garden plot’; A Fine Day; A New Hymn; The Black Monkey; The Family; ‘When I was little’; The Clock; The Letter; The Birthday Present; The Pillar Box; Song by the Window Before Bed; The Funeral; A Little Boy’s Dream; Winter Song; On a Young Lady’s Sixth Anniversary; Song of the Little White Girl; A Few Rules for Beginners; A Day in Bed; Opposites; A Joyful Song of Five!; The Candle Fairy; The Last Thing; A Quarrel; A Song for Our Real Children; Grown Up Talks; You won’t understand this – ’cause you’re a Boy; The Lonesome Child; Evening Song of the Thoughtful Child; Autumn Song; ‘Out here it is the Summer time’; ‘London London I know what I shall do’; A Fairy Tale; Vignette; In the Rangitaiki Valley; Youth; 1908; ‘Red as the wine of forgotten ages’; The Grandmother; Butterflies; Little Brother’s Secret; The Man with the Wooden Leg; Little Brother’s Story; The Candle; When I was a Bird; Ave; ‘Lo I am standing the test’; Why Love is Blind; ‘Out to the glow of the sunset, brother’; In the Tropics; ‘I am quite happy for you to see’; To Pan; October (To V.M.B.); ‘You ask me for a picture of my room’; Words for T.W.T.; A Sad Truth; A Song of Summer; The Winter Fire; In the Church; The Lilac Tree; On the Sea Shore; Revelation; The Trio; 1909; The Arabian Shawl; Sleeping Together; The Quarrel (2); Spring Wind in London; ‘I could find no rest’; Florian nachdenklich; To Stanislaw Wyspianski; 1910; Song of Karen the Dancing Child; Loneliness; The Sea-Child; Sea Song; ‘A Gipsy’s camp was in the copse’; Collection: The Earth Child; I: ‘It has rained all day’; II: In the very early morning; III: ‘Through the dark forest we walked apart and silently’; IV: ‘The Sea called – I lay on the rocks and said’; V: ‘In an opal dream cave I found a fairy’; VI: ‘The fields are snowbound no longer’; VII: ‘My belovéd rose out of the river’; VIII: ‘The tassels of the broom swept the long hillside’; IX: ‘In a narrow path of a wood I met a witch’; X: ‘When my plant grew too big for the flowerpot’; XI: ‘The door of your room is never opened’; XII: ‘Across the red sky two birds flying’; XIII: ‘I ran to the forest for shelter’; XIV: ‘A little wind crept round the house’; XV: ‘Why are you smiling so?’; XVI: ‘From a far distant land’; XVII: ‘You put your hands behind your back’; XVIII: ‘There are days when the longing for you’; XIX: ‘Night came – I opened my eyes’; XX: ‘There was a child once’; XXI: ‘A jar of daffodils stood on the piano’; XXII: ‘In the swiftly moving sleigh’; XXIII: ‘Round me in a ring’; XXIV: ‘How quiet the Grandmother’s hands’; XXV: ‘In the purple heather’; XXVI: ‘How far have you come’; XXVII: ‘In the savage heart of the bush; XXVIII: ‘I had company tonight’; To God the Father; Yesterday in Autumn; Violets; Jangling Memory; The Changeling; Thought Dreams; To K. M.; 1911; Limbo; ‘The world is beautiful tonight’; Mr Richard Le Gallienne; Mr Alfred Austin; Love Cycle; 1912; Mirabelle; ‘And Mr Wells’; ‘She has thrown me the knotted flax’; The Secret; The Awakening River; Very Early Spring; 1913; Where did you get that hat?; Song of the Camellia Blossoms; The Last Lover; Scarlet Tulips; 1914; ‘William (P.G.) is very well’; The Meeting; ‘These be two countrywomen’; 1915; ‘Most merciful God’; The Deaf House Agent; ‘Toujours fatiguée, Madame?’; 1916; ‘Twenty to twelve, says our old clock’; To L.H.B.; ‘Last night for the first time since you were dead’; The Gulf; Villa Pauline; Camomile Tea; The Town Between the Hills; Waves; Voices of the Air!; Sanary; ‘Lives like logs of driftwood’; 1917; A Victorian Idyll; Night-Scented Stock; ‘Now I am a Plant, a Weed’; ‘Out in the Garden’; ‘There is a solemn wind tonight’; Tragedy; ‘So that mysterious mother, faint with sleep’; A Version from Heine; 1918; Caution; The Butterfly; Strawberries and the Sailing Ship; Malade; Pic-Nic; Arrivée; Dame Seule; Verses Writ in a Foreign Bed; 1919; To Anne Estelle Rice; Fairy Tale; Covering Wings; Firelight; Tedious Brief Adventure of K.M.; Men and Women; Friendship; Sorrowing Love; A Little Girl’s Prayer; Secret Flowers; The New Husband; He wrote; Et Après; The Ring; 1920; Old-Fashioned Widow’s Song; Sunset; By all the laws of the M. & P.; 1921; Winter Bird; 1922; The Wounded Bird; Notes; Bibliography.