The wild, exotic life of Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield left New Zealand when she was 19 years old and died at the age of 34.In her short life she became our most famous short story writer, acquiring an international reputation for her stories, poetry, letters, journals and reviews. Biographies on Mansfield have been translated into 51 languages. It is more than 100 years since her death but even now she continues to inspire New Zealanders.
Shine On Katherine Mansfield is a series of eight short documentary films about her legacy and how Mansfield remains very much alive in the works of Kiwi writers, artists, musicians who find creativity in her writing and the wild, exotic life she led.
The series is funded by NZ On Air and produced by Wellington journalist and filmmaker, Anna Cottrell.
The first episode, Inspiration to Survive, looks at Katherine Mansfield’s link with famous WWII spy Odette Hallowes.
A smuggled copy of Mansfield’s letters may have contributed to ‘saving’ Hallowes after she was caught by the Germans in France, brutally tortured and eventually transferred to the notorious Ravensbrück concentration camp. She survived the horrors of Ravensbrück and returned to England.
Many years later her family found a battered, disguised copy of The Letters of Katherine Mansfield. Hallowes had copied sections of Mansfield’s letters, especially those relating to ‘the outside world of nature’. This book was recently handed to the Imperial War Museum by her relatives, some of whom now live in New Zealand.