We've selected six of the most unforgettable garden parties in books

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Reading lists

The greatest garden parties in literature

10 classics to celebrate International Women’s Day 

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10 classics to celebrate International Women’s Day

Bliss

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. 
 
 Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil. 
 
Katherine Mansfield's perceptive and resonant writing helped to define the modern short story, observing apparently trivial incidents to create quietly devastating revelations of inner lives. Graceful, delicate and burning with emotion, Mansfield's stories were integral in shaping the Modernist movement and redefined a genre. This collection contains some of Mansfield's most celebrated stories, including 'Bliss', 'The Garden Party' and 'The Daughters of the Late Colonel'. 
 
'The only writing I have ever been jealous of.' - Virginia Woolf

Born in New Zealand in 1888, Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp was primarily a writer of short stories. She published Prelude and The Garden Party and Other Stories before her premature death from TB in 1923. Something Childish and her journal and letters were published posthumously.

Katherine Mansfield's perceptive and resonant writing helped to define the modern short story, observing apparently trivial incidents to create quietly devastating revelations of inner lives. Graceful, delicate and burning with emotion, Mansfield's stories were integral in shaping the Modernist movement and redefined a genre. This collection contains some of Mansfield's most celebrated stories, including 'Bliss', 'The Garden Party' and 'The Daughters of the Late Colonel'.

The Garden Party

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'They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden party if they had ordered it' 
 
A windless, warm day greets the Sheridan family on the day of their garden party. As daughter Laura takes the reins on party preparations the news of a neighbour's demise casts a cloud over the host and threatens the entire celebration. 
 
The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.

Miss Brill

'And again, as always, he had the feeling he was holding something that never was quite his - his. Something too delicate, too precious, that would fly away once he let go.' 
 
Three sharp and powerful short stories from Katherine Mansfield, one of the genre's all-time masters. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923). Mansfield's works available in Penguin Classics are The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield and The Garden Party and Other Stories.

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923). Mansfield's works available in Penguin Classics are The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield and The Garden Party and Other Stories.

Something Childish But Very Natural

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was born in Wellington, New Zealand. She came to London for the latter part of her education, and could not settle back into Wellington society; in 1908 she left for Europe again, never to return. Her first book, In a German Pension, was published in 1911. In 1912, she began to write for Rhythm, edited by John Middleton Murry, whom she eventually married. She was a conscious modernist and an experimenter in life and writing. With &lsquo;Prelude&rsquo; in 1918 she established beyond doubt her distinctive voice as a writer of short fiction. By 1917 she had contracted tuberculosis, and from that time led a wandering life in search of good health.

Henry is naive and has never experienced love. When he meets golden-haired Edna in a train carriage, however, his world changes forever. But the intensity of their feelings threatens their innocence, and Edna knows she is too young to leave her childhood behind. 
 
United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be introduced to love&rsquo;s endlessly fascinating possibilities and extremities: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love, not to mention lost love, twisted and obsessional love&hellip;

Penguin Classics

The Garden Party and Other Stories

Fifteen exquisite tales from one of the world'd greatest writers of the short story 
 
Innovative, startlingly perceptive and aglow with colour, these stories were written towards the end of Katherine Mansfield's tragically short life. Many are set in the author's native New Zealand, others in England and the French Riviera. All are revelations of the unspoken, half-understood emotions that make up everyday experience - from the blackly comic 'The Daughters of the Late Colonel', and the short, sharp sketch 'Miss Brill', in which a lonely woman's precarious sense of self is brutally destroyed, to the vivid impressionistic evocation of family life in 'At the Bay'. 'All that I write,' Mansfield said, 'all that I am - is on the borders of the sea. It is a kind of playing.'

Innovative, startlingly perceptive and aglow with colour, these fifteen stories were written towards the end of Katherine Mansfield's tragically short life. Many are set in the author's native New Zealand, others in England and the French Riviera. All are revelations of the unspoken, half-understood emotions that make up everyday experience - from the blackly comic 'The Daughters of the Late Colonel', and the short, sharp sketch 'Miss Brill', in which a lonely woman's precarious sense of self is brutally destroyed, to the vivid impressionistic evocation of family life in 'At the Bay'. 'All that I write,' Mansfield said, 'all that I am - is on the borders of the sea. It is a kind of playing.'

The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield

Born in New Zealand in 1888, Kathering Mansfield Beauchamp was primarily a writer of short stories. published Prelude and The Garden Party and Other Stories before her premature death from TB in 1923. One more book (Something Childish) and her journal and letters were published posthumously. 
 
Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962 and she lives in Cambridge. She is the author of Free Love and Other Stories, Like,Other Stories and Other Stories, Hotel World, The Whole Story and Other Stories, The Accidental,Girl Meets Boy, The First Person and Other Stories, There but for the, Artful, How to be both, and Public library and other stories. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize and The Accidental was shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Orange Prize. How to be both won the Baileys Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Folio Prize. Her next novel is forthcoming in 2016.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALI SMITH 
 
Katherine Mansfield's clear, sparkling and perceptive short stories revolutionized the genre, and this collection represents the whole range of her writing. Moving, resonant, full of light and colour, they range from short sharp studies to longer, richer tales, encompassing her three major volumes Bliss, The Garden Party and In a German Pension, and fifteen tantalizing fragments of unfinished stories published after her tragic death, including 'Honesty', an intriguing tale of two bachelors, and 'The Doves' Nest', an exquisite story of a widowed mother and her daughter in the Riviera who receive a mysterious gentleman caller. Graceful, delicate and quietly devastating, they observe apparently trivial incidents to create sensitive, often painful revelations of her characters' inner lives.

The Garden Party And Other Stories

This selection of stories by Katherine Mansfield has been chosen by Claire Tomalin and emphasize the stronger, feminist side of her writing rather than the popular, more sentimental view. The 21 stories are presented in chronological order and include &quot;Prelude&quot;, &quot;The Garden Party&quot; and &quot;At the Bay&quot;.

Katherine Mansfield

She drew a long, soft breath, as though the paper daffodils between them were almost too sweet to bearKatherine Mansfield was a magician of the short story, whose work was described by Virginia Woolf as ‘the only writing I have ever been jealous of’. These eight tales show her gift for transforming fleeting moments – a chance meeting, a letter received, a careless remark – into small miracles of language and feeling.

Katherine Mansfield

Books by Katherine Mansfield

Articles featuring Katherine Mansfield

The greatest garden parties in literature

10 classics to celebrate International Women’s Day

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