SOURCE: Kaplan, Sydney Janet. “Rescuing a Reputation.” Women's Review of Books 5, nos. 10-11 (July 1988): 18-19.

In the following review, Kaplan offers a positive assessment of Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life, concluding that Tomalin's book improves upon previous Mansfield biographies by Antony Alpers and Jeffrey Meyers.

Katherine Mansfield was born on October 14, 1888 in Wellington, New Zealand. It is fitting that Claire Tomalin's long-awaited biography [Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life] should appear this year, the centennial of Mansfield's birth. Katherine Beauchamp (Katherine Mansfield was her pen-name) had a comfortable, privileged childhood as the third daughter in a family of four girls and one boy. Her father was a powerful figure in Wellington, a self-made man who left school at fourteen and eventually became the director of the Bank of New Zealand. Her parents had the foresight—even if it was mainly for social rather than philosophical reasons—to ensure that...