ABSTRACT
Katherine Mansfield had high praise for William and Dorothy Wordsworth, and this article examines the influence of Dorothy’s journals on Mansfield. Her copy of the book has a note in the margins that takes the editor William Knight to task: when he explains that ‘there is no need to record’ all the ‘trivial details’ Dorothy Wordsworth included about her domestic life, the note reads, ‘There is! Fool!’ Mansfield reflected on the Wordsworths’ daily pleasures and she wrote, ‘I understand Wordsworth & his sister […] They’re fixed – they’re true’. Attention to Dorothy’s journals reveals other elements that would have influenced Mansfield’s stories that, in their search for truth, put women at the centre of experience. The paper looks, as well, to Murry’s reliance on Romanticism in his creation of Mansfield’s posthumous reputation in his creation of Mansfield’s Journal.
