This is not a letter

This is not a portrait of Katherine Mansfield by Anne Estelle Rice (DeAgostini/Getty Images)

---

This is not a letter. It is only my arms round you for a quick minute.

Katherine Mansfield
Letter to her brother, Leslie Beauchamp
22nd September 1915

---

This is not a letter at all, darling—only a message. Take care of yourself. I do not know why but just this moment I see awfully clearly the elephant on your big inkstand.

Katherine Mansfield
Letter to S. S. Koteliansky
End 1915

---

Dearest this is not a letter—I am still gasping rather after trying to move the Mountain in time.

Katherine Mansfield
Letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell
4th January 1918

---

My treasure this is not a letter. It is a kind of intake of breath before I really begin to tell you all.

Katherine Mansfield
Letter to her husband, John Middleton Murry
9th January 1918

---

This is not a letter. It’s only to say I have yours which arrived today. It’s only to greet you—and to send my love & to beg you to get better quickly. All those things.

Katherine Mansfield
Letter to Sylvia Lynd
31st January 1920

---

This is not a letter. Now you owe me one—pleasant thought.

Katherine Mansfield
Letter to Dorothy Brett
14th November 1921

---

This is just a note—not a letter. My letters to you—the ones that remain unwritten would fill volumes. But I feel you know that.

Katherine Mansfield
Letter to Sydney Schiff
25th December 1921

---

Darling precious Bogey this is not a letter this time, only this note written on a table piled with paper chains, flowers, little bon bon cases, gold wire, gilded fir cones—you know the kind of thing.

Katherine Mansfield
Letter to her husband, John Middleton Murry
23rd December 1922

---

This is not a letter. I will write fully from Paris.

With fondest love, dearest Father
Ever your devoted child
Kass

Katherine Mansfield
Letter to her father, Sir Harold Beauchamp
30th September 1922

---

Required reading…

• The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 1: Letters to Correspondents A–J

• The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 2: Letters to Correspondents K–Z

• Letters Between Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry