The letters included in this volume cover the 18 months Mansfield spent in England, France and Switzerland, from May 1920 to the end of 1921. It is the period of some of her finest stories, and here her life took its most decisive turn. There is a subtle but unmistakable change in her expectations: she derives a tough directness. The qualities of her earlier correspondence remain undiminished: the precision and directness; the intelligence and wit; the dark incisiveness. Above all, these letters comprise a record of very considerable courage, against increasingly adverse odds, as she approached the final years of her life.