All Sorts of Lives

All Sorts of Lives is a beautiful, fastidiously researched and fascinating exploration of Mansfield's life and work. This is great as an introduction to an unjustly neglected author and a joy for those of us who already love her writing -- A.L. KENNEDY In this sensitive and comprehensive biography, Claire Harman uncovers some steamy new details about Mansfield’s bisexuality, but doesn’t let the life distract from the blisteringly intense stories * The Times, *Books of the Year* * What a gift to the biographer, this life of adventure and sickness and sex and celebrity - and that's before you start on Mansfield as a leading modernist . . . It's hard to imagine a more compelling advocate for Mansfield's fiction, or a better introduction to it . . . brilliant -- Claire Lowdon * Sunday Times * A wonderful book to mark the centenary of Mansfield's death . . . [her] clever insistence on placing the life and work side by side allows her to give brief but powerful accounts of Mansfield's relations with other writers -- Ruth Scurr * Spectator * Harman combines literary criticism with uncovering the life of the influential modernist writer, via chapters linked to individual short stories. The best literary biographies make you want to go back to the subject’s work with renewed passion, and Harman more than succeeds. In fact, her enthusiasm goes some way into bringing Mansfield’s own vitality to the page * Independent, Books of the Year *