'The red and yellow tulips, heavy with flowers, seemed to lean upon the dusk. A grey cat, dragging its belly, crept across the lawn, and a black one, its shadow, trailed after.' Powerful and evocative, each of Katherine Mansfield's short stories is a masterclass in the form that made her name. Cut tragically short at the age of 34, hers was a life of passion that took her from New Zealand to Bohemian London and Paris. These various landscapes are reflected with verve in her writing, and are peopled with astutely and intimately drawn characters: lonely Miss Brill in her ermine, Colonel Pinner's adrift daughters, mysterious Pearl Fulton. Praised by Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence, Mansfield's inimitable stories are essential reading.