Tonight, we’ll read the opening to the short story “At the Bay” written by Katherine Mansfield, published in 1922.

Mansfield was a New Zealand writer, widely considered one of the most influential and important authors of the modernist movement. Her works are celebrated across the world, and have been published in 25 languages.

This story, based on her childhood growing up in the suburbs of New Zealand, represents Mansfield’s best mature work, a luminous example of her literary impressionism.