Prelude

"Prelude" is a short story by Katherine Mansfield. It was first published by the Hogarth Press in July 1918, after Virginia Woolf encouraged her to finish the story. Mansfield had begun writing "Prelude" in the midst of a love affair she had in Paris in 1915. It was reprinted in Bliss and Other Stories (1920). The story was a compressed and subtler version of a longer work The Aloe, which was later published posthumously in full.

The story is based on the Beauchamps' move to Karori, a country suburb of Wellington, in 1893. Alpers says that some readers may not pick up the numerous hints that Linda is pregnant.