Katherine Mansfield was born in New Zealand in 1888. She spent most of her adult life in Europe where she became a pioneer of the modernist movement along with James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence. Her short stories influenced many contemporaries and changed the form forever. Her personal life was highly unconventional including many love affairs with both men and women, pregnancies, intense friendships, travel and adventures. The last five years of her life were overshadowed by tuberculosis though she produced some of her best work during this time including the publication of the collections Bliss and Other Stories (1920) and The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922). She died in France in 1923 at the age of just 34.