The Garden Party, and Other Stories

About the book

In the title story, Laura's involvement in preparations for a family party is unsettled by news of a nearby death, bringing pleasure and class difference into an uncomfortable relation. The collection places that encounter beside stories of bereavement, loneliness, marriage, service, and the uncertain excitement of entering society. At the Bay moves among members of a household and their neighbours, while Miss Brill gives a solitary observer's imagined participation in public life a concentrated emotional force. Mansfield shifts perspective through sensory details and fleeting associations, allowing an ordinary moment to change meaning without a large outward event. The stories invite readers to notice what their characters cannot quite formulate, especially where an inherited social role fails to accommodate the feeling that has suddenly become impossible to ignore.

• Class and perception
• Unspoken feeling
• Everyday revelation

Why read it

For stories that make a brief perception or social encounter carry the weight of a much larger emotional disturbance.

Story collection · English text