Katherine Mansfield & John middleton murray

Again picked solely on the basis that happened to live in a rather nice house on East heath road opposite Hampstead heath (see below)  Both authors but both lead such colourful lives they need their own separate, articles, we'll start with Katherine... 

Katherine Mansfield

Author, best known for her short stories
Born in New Zealand in 1888, aged 19 she moved to the UK to study, away from the strict confines of her family she lead a very bohemian lifestyle and had several lovers both male and female. Eventually she settled with a young musician Garnet Trowell however his family disapproved and broke up the relationship, on discovering she was pregnant with Garnett's child Katherine had a shotgun wedding to a music teacher named Charles Bowden, the marriage was a disaster and she left him the same week to run away with her girlfriend Ida Baker.
When Katherine's mother discovered what her daughter had been getting up to she came over from New Zealand and whisked her away to a Spa in Germany where she suffered a miscarriage. 
Following this this her mother returned to New Zealand and Mansfield decided to stay  in Germany where she met a new lover Floryan Sobienowski who not only helped her develop her writing but also gave her nasty case of gonorrhoea, which remained untreated for over a year and (unsurprisingly) took a terrible toll on her health.
She returned to London the following year (1911) Where she published her first collection of short stories, it was around this time she met John Middleton Murray who was editor of a magazine called Rhythm to which she submitted a dark thriller called 'The Woman in the Store'. Middleton Murray was impressed with the story and got her a job at the magazine, the two of them began working closely together and quickly became lovers.
While working at Rhythm they rubbed shoulders with many great literary talents of the day including DH Laurence and many of the Bloomsbury group, in fact Virginia Woolf even published Mansfield's novel 'Prelude' in 1918 (a tribute to her brother who was killed in WW1) 
​Katherine and Middleton-Murray eventually got married and settled down in Hampstead but the relationship was a stormy one as she hated domestic life, and he was bad at managing money and often in debt, they had several separations (with various other lover in between) but finally parted ways in 1918.  Later that same year Mansfield was diagnosed with tuberculosis,In 1919 on the advice of her doctor she travelled to Menton in the south of France with her friend and lover Ida Baker to get away from the cold English climate. In spite of her failing health the time in France was productive for her writing, she completed two critically acclaimed collections of short stories 'Bliss' and 'The garden party.' Before the disease claimed her life, in January 1923 she suffered a fatal lung haemmorhage  and died age just 34.

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