Katherine Mansfield

Born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp in 1888 in Wellington, New Zealand, Katherine Mansfield, as she chose to call herself as a writer, became one of the shapers of the modern short story. This collection of 15 unabridged titles has been skillfully chosen to show her development from her first experiments to her final triumphs.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- Virginia Woolf once wrote that the only writer she was ever jealous of was her friend and fellow Bloomsbury Group member Katherine Mansfield. D.H. Lawrence memorialized her as Gudrun, one of the sisters in "Women in Love." Considered one of the 20th century's finest short-story writers, Mansfield was born and reared in this small colonial city at the turn of the last century.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- Virginia Woolf once wrote that the only writer she was ever jealous of was her friend and fellow Bloomsbury Group member Katherine Mansfield. D.H. Lawrence memorialized her as Gudrun, one of the sisters in "Women in Love." Considered one of the 20th century's finest short-story writers, Mansfield was born and reared in this small colonial city at the turn of the last century.

Meet the new "Bridges of Madison County," 1997. "A Cup of Tea" takes us out of Iowa and back to the drawing rooms of New York in 1917. Henry James and Robert James Waller are strange bedfellows, but there is always a lowest common denominator and often it's infidelity. There you have it. Common or no, there is the weeping, the lost opportunity, the aching heart, the sense of duty, the sense of betrayal, the innocent victims.

Some of your readers might like to know that Lausanne was a haunt of English and American writers ("Olympic Games' Real Home Is in Switzerland," Aug. 2). Young Edward Gibbon was sent there by his father to be brainwashed after he was converted to Catholicism. Years later he returned to Lausanne and stayed in the Maison de la Grotte, where he finished "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The house was demolished to make way for the central post office. At Ouchy, the port of Lausanne at the bottom of the funicular, is the old Auberge de l'Ancre, which is now called the Hotel d'Angelterre.

Meet the new "Bridges of Madison County," 1997. "A Cup of Tea" takes us out of Iowa and back to the drawing rooms of New York in 1917. Henry James and Robert James Waller are strange bedfellows, but there is always a lowest common denominator and often it's infidelity. There you have it. Common or no, there is the weeping, the lost opportunity, the aching heart, the sense of duty, the sense of betrayal, the innocent victims.

Claire Tomalin forges a coolly balanced biography from Mansfield's exquisitely neurotic mixture of melodramatic posing, reckless ambition and sheer bloody malice.

Great story about the author Katherine Mansfield and Wellington, New Zealand ("Wellington's Storied Past," April 21). As American consul in Wellington from 1979 through 1983, I was familiar with the plaque to her memory placed prominently at 47 Fitzherbert Terrace, on the lawn in front of the U.S. Embassy. Just across the street is a small, serene park, lush in greenery, where I often took my lunch and read some of her stories. Mansfield's name recalls many fond memories of a wonderful country.

Alan Cooke, a British-born director whose credits ranged from television's "Lou Grant" to tours of U.S. college campuses presenting "King Lear," is dead of liver failure caused by hepatitis. A family spokesman said this week he was 68 and died in Los Angeles on Oct. 9. Born in London, Cooke began directing while a he was member of the Coldstream Guards stationed in Palestine at the end of World War II. It was a production of Bernard Shaw's "Arms and the Man."

LAWRENCE AND THE WOMEN: The Intimate Life of D.H. Lawrence by Elaine Feinstein (HarperCollins: $27.50; 268 pp.). If there's a writer who all but begs to be viewed through the women in his life, it's D.H.

Some of your readers might like to know that Lausanne was a haunt of English and American writers ("Olympic Games' Real Home Is in Switzerland," Aug. 2). Young Edward Gibbon was sent there by his father to be brainwashed after he was converted to Catholicism. Years later he returned to Lausanne and stayed in the Maison de la Grotte, where he finished "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The house was demolished to make way for the central post office. At Ouchy, the port of Lausanne at the bottom of the funicular, is the old Auberge de l'Ancre, which is now called the Hotel d'Angelterre.

Born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp in 1888 in Wellington, New Zealand, Katherine Mansfield, as she chose to call herself as a writer, became one of the shapers of the modern short story. This collection of 15 unabridged titles has been skillfully chosen to show her development from her first experiments to her final triumphs.

Claire Tomalin forges a coolly balanced biography from Mansfield's exquisitely neurotic mixture of melodramatic posing, reckless ambition and sheer bloody malice.

Mary Lavin, who depicted the narrow subtleties of Irish small town life in short stories and novels, has died. She was 83. The prize-winning writer died Monday in a Dublin nursing home. In a Los Angeles Times review of a book about Irish women writers in 1990, Thomas Cahill characterized Lavin's work as representing "surely the boldest tradition of women writers in all literature." Born in East Walpole, Mass.