A short story by Katherine Mansfield , read by Molly Cullen
When she died in 1923 at the early age of thirty-five, Katherine Mansfield left a niche in English letters which it seems likely will never be filled. To the art of the short story she brought the peculiar genius of one who, in the words of her husband, J. Middleton Murry , ' seemed to adjust herself to life as a flower adjusts itself to the earth and to the sun '. Though by no means a cynic at heart Katherine Mansfield might be said to have done for English letters what Guy de Maupassant did for the literature of his country. There was no shade of human feeling, none of the tragicomic aspects of human relationship, which seemed to pass her by. There is no doubt that ' A Dill Pickle' in its subtly poignant analysis of a simple human situation is an example of this author at her best.