Oh, how delightful it is to fall in love for the first time! How exciting to go to your first dance when you are a girl of eighteen! But life can also be hard and cruel, if you are young and inexperienced and travelling alone across Europe... or if you are a child from the wrong social class... or a singer without work and the rent to be paid. Set in Europe and New Zealand, these nine stories by Katherine Mansfield dig deep beneath the appearances of life to show us the causes of human happiness and despair.

On a day in 1821, a man and six children stood around a grave. They were burying a wife and mother. The children were all very young, and within a few years the two oldest were dead, too. Close to the wild beauty of the Yorkshire moors, the father brought up his young family. Who had heard of the Brontës of Haworth then? Branwell died young, but his sisters became famous writers. But they did not live to grow old or to enjoy their fame. Only their father was left, alone with his memories.

Tom Walsh had a lot to learn about life. He liked travelling, and he was in no hurry. He liked meeting people, anyone and everyone. He liked the two American girls on the train. They were nice and very friendly. They knew a lot of places. Tom thought they were fun. Tom certainly had a lot to