In a sketch called ‘Sunday Lunch’ (1912) written for the little magazine Rhythm, Katherine Mansfield seems to show her bohemian credentials. She knows her way around the avant-garde smart set, for this is no sedate British traditional roast followed by apple pie as its title might suggest. Here the party-guests smoke and flirt in an atmosphere ‘of agitating intimacy’. Their host manipulates his male guests: ‘“Glad you came.” Takes guest aside. “I say, that French dancing woman's here. Over there – on the leopard skin – with the Chinese fan. Pitch into her, there's a good chap.”’ This evokes shades of the contemporary doggerel about the author of erotic novels Elinor Glyn: ‘Would you like to sin / With Elinor Glyn / On a tiger skin? / Or would you prefer / To err / With her / On some other fur?’ The aura of decadent and knowing malice in the sketch, implying that the author relishes her ironic control, is countered in her short stories focusing on parties. They are about ways of seeing rather than maintaining a consistently satirical stance. The party-givers and party-goers want to project an image of themselves which is always undermined by a moment of disruption when the picture is skewed, when Mansfield's searching scrutiny reveals an aspect of the secret self, and a protagonist comes close to an epiphany which is often ultimately elusive.