The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 4

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"You see - to me - life and work are two things indivisible. It's only by being true to life that I can be true to art."

The letters in this volume, written by Katherine Mansfield to her husband the critic and writer John Middleton Murry, closely document the everyday movements of the turbulent four years before her death at the age of 34. Written from England, then Italy, then Switzerland, then France, over a time in which her health is steadily disintegrating and in a torrent of practical and emotional negotiation, they chart the sinuous shifts of her relationship with the often hapless Murry and recreate in detail each of her chancy temporary homes as she crosses Europe looking for help with the tuberculosis that will end her life in early 1923.

Their gifts to readers encountering them now is cornucopic.

First there's her astonishing tenacity of spirit against the odds. Then there's the rise not just of her spiritual independence but her determination to be financially independent too: at the time of her worse physical incapacity this stunningly capacious letter-writer is also producing, at fuselit speed, the best short stories of her life.

Then there's her bright clever presence, always "rooted in Life", her irresistible interest in everything from science to philosophy, from the movement of a fly crossing a table to the meaning of light on a far horizon. There's her grace under pressure, her glinting wordplay conjuring the spice of life of the time, and the way she lifts what she calls "the shutter I live behind" to reveal not just what it's like to traverse Europe just after the First World War but also a spate of brilliant social critique paired with a sharp literary take on everything from Shakespeare to her contemporaries.

These letters burn with her wit, her fury and her integrity. Rich with allusion, with the quickfire glance of her mind, they chart her own aesthetic acumen. They're a force of sublime energy.

"You know the feeling that a great writer gives you: 'my spirit has been fed and refreshed - it has partaken of something new.' " Over this correspondence - and this is its most amazing achievement - urgency and fear meet with a "marvellous serenity". In a reading of these letters, in their gift of the shifts, the trappings and the liberations of the last years of this great writer, something truly timeless happens. -- Ali Smith, author