Katherine Mansfield’s Europe: Station to Station

A century of influence

Katherine Mansfield was a New Zealand author of international renown. Her short stories and poetry have been translated into more than 25 languages and her work continues to have an impact one hundred years after her death in France in 1923.

Katherine Mansfield’s travels through Europe

Mansfield spent most of her adult life in Europe, working as a writer, editor, and critic, and living in various places, moving as fortune and misfortune decreed. Author Redmer Yska follows these movements in his new book, Katherine Mansfield's Europe: Station to Station.

Using Mansfield’s letters and diaries as guides, he travels through Germany, France and Switzerland to the villas, pensions, hotels, spas, railway stations, churches, towns, beaches and cities where Mansfield wrote some of her finest stories.

To commemorate the centenary of Katherine Mansfield’s death and celebrate her ongoing creative legacy, Cherie Jacobson, Director of Katherine Mansfield House & Garden, will interview Redmer about his new book.

Public history talks

These free Public History Talks are a collaboration between the Alexander Turnbull Library and Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage. They are usually held on the first Wednesday of the month, March to November.

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The talks are recorded and you can find them at the Apple store, Spotify and Podbean #newzealandhistory.

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About the speakers

Redmer Yska is a writer and historian based in Wellington. He has published books on a range of subjects, including a social history of cannabis, 1950s New Zealand teenagers, Dutch New Zealanders (like himself), a biography of Wellington City and a history of the tabloid newspaper, NZ Truth. Yska’s first book about Mansfield, A Strange Beautiful Excitement: Katherine Mansfield’s Wellington (Otago University Press, 2017), was longlisted for the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Cherie Jacobson is the Director of Katherine Mansfield House & Garden (KMHG), the 1888 house in Thorndon in which Katherine Mansfield was born that is now a museum. Her interest in Mansfield began when she found a book about Mansfield’s life and work in the Martinborough Public Library as an eager 10-year-old reader. She has a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in English Literature and a Master of Museum and Heritage Practice. Since beginning at KMHG in 2019, she has curated a range of Mansfield exhibitions such as Costuming Katherine and Mansfield and Music and collaborated on publications including Woman in Love: Katherine Mansfield’s Love Letters.