"By the time of this second volume Mansfield is writing as a serious author and mature woman and the style of her letters is formed--fluent, intimate, evocative."--
Times Literary Supplement"Essential reading for anyone interested in twentieth-century literature."--
Booklist"Her comments on these [literary] gatherings range, though not far, from caustic to bitchy, and are most enjoyable...we get, and it is impressive, a vision of a true writer for whom work was both life and salvation."--
Sunday Telegraph"These are harrowing letters. But they are not in the end discouraging. The narrowness of the sick room did not so much contract as enlarge Mansfield's inner world. As her body lowered its defences, so in a sense did her imagination."--
Observer"Mansfield's letters...are among the most memorable correspondence by any literary figure--intimate, witty, frank, revealing, and pungent. Absorbingly interesting in themselves, they also illuminate her short stories by disclosing her artistic concerns and her struggle to perfect herself as a writer and a human being....O'Sullivan's introduction offers a useful perspective on Mansfield's life which...is emblematic of a "certain kind of twentieth-century woman"....A compact, representative selection which provides a panoramic view of the primary events and concerns of Mansfield's life....Previews the most important and interesting of the late letters."--
English Literature in Transition 1880-1920