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Series Editors: Gary Scharnhorst, University of New Mexico and Eric Haralson, State University of New York, Stony Brook. This is the only series to provide in-depth critical introductions to major modern and contemporary short story writers worldwide. Each volume offers: a comprehensive overview of the artists short fiction-including detailed analyses of every significant story; interviews, essays, memoirs and other biographical materials -- often previously unpublished; a representative selection of critical responses; and a comprehensive primary bibliography, a selected bibliography of important criticism, a chronology of the artists life and works and an index.

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CHOICE Review

Kobler's book, although late in this Twayne series for a writer of Mansfield's stature, is perhaps the best of the series to date. Kobler (University of North Texas) provides no biography of Mansfield, probably because that is covered in the classic Antony Alpers biography, The Life of Katherine Mansfield (CH, Jul'80), but also because he deals with Mansfield's stories by theme and by locale rather than chronologically. He is too modest when he defines his audience as beginning or occasional readers of Mansfield, for his discussions are stimulating even to those who know Mansfield's stories well. He conveys a vivid sense of the relationship between Mansfield's personality and her artistic theory, seeing her as a romantic writer, like Wordsworth and Keats, who found "more truth and beauty in the production of art than in the direct experience of life and nature." Kobler gernerously includes Helen Nebeker's essay on "Bliss" and praises it as a model of analytical criticism. One of the attractive aspects of the book in fact is the humaneness of Kobler's values. This is one of the essential books on Mansfield (along with the Alpers biography mentioned above and Gillian Boddy's 1988 study Katherine Mansfield: The Woman and the Writer, CH, Jul'89) and perhaps the most interesting: it is a book of criticism that one does not want to put down. Strongly recommended for all libraries. -J. B. Beston, Nazareth College of Rochester