Katherine Mansfield was born in the year 1888 in Wellington, New Zealand. She was born into a middle-class family. Her father, Harold Beauchamp, was a banker and her mother, Annie Burnell Dyer, strived to maintain the appearance of middle-class social status. At the age of nine, Katherine published her first text. When she was only fifteen she went to London and studied at Queen"s college. Three years later she came back to New Zealand and became interested in music. Her father, however, denied her the opportunity to become a professional cello player. In 1908 she studied at Wellington Technical College typing and bookkeeping. Katherine"s lifelong friend, Ida Baker, persuaded Katherine"s father to allow her to move back to England, and she never visited New Zealand again. In England, Katherine devoted her entire self to writing.

             Mansfield married a man named George Brown in 1909, and only a few days after the wedding she became unhappy and left George Brown. She then decided to tour for a while as an extra in the opera and had affairs with both men and women. One of the affairs was with a musician named Garnett Trowell and she became pregnant. She suffered a miscarriage and then returned back to London in 1910. Katherine soon became ill with an untreated sexually transmitted disease. This caused her to have weak health for the rest of her life.

             In 1911, Katherine Mansfield met a man named John Middleton Murry. He was a Socialist and a former literature critic, and soon became Katherine"s lover. A few years later Katherine divorced her first husband, George Brown, and married John Murry. In 1915, Katherine met her brother "Chummie" before he died in World War I. After her brother"s death, she focused her writing on New Zealand and her family. "Prelude," one of her most famous stories, was written during this time period. Katherine and her husband John became closely associated with D.