Katherine Mansfield was born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp to a middle-class family in New Zealand, which had been a possession of the British empire.  Although she was later sent to London for a university education, her early life in New Zealand provided the subject matter for much of her later literature, which exemplified the tension Mansfield felt between her European interests and her New Zealand roots.  Her father was a wealthy businessman who could afford to give his daughter the best European education.