Correspondence with writers including D H Lawrence, E M Forster, T S Eliot and H G Wells and a hand-written recipe for an orange souffle are among papers of New Zealand author Katherine Mansfield acquired by the Turnbull Library.

The library, which is part of the National Library, has acquired six carton-loads of papers held by the family of Mansfield's second husband, John Middleton Murry.

"This acquisition is the last-known collection of Mansfield material held in a private collection," said Fiona Oliver, the Turnbull's curator of New Zealand and Pacific publications.

Mansfield grew up in Wellington and left for the UK as a young woman. She became part of a "new dawn" in English literature with T S Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.

The newly acquired papers include Mansfield's passport, with a photo showing her with advanced tuberculosis, and stamps of the places she visited in her itinerant life between 1919 and 1923.

They also include rare photographs, correspondence with a who's-who of early 20th century literature and recipes, in Mansfield's hand, for orange souffle and cold-water scones.

Items from the acquisition will be displayed in the Turnbull's Reading Room in Wellington, and the full collection will be available to researchers from late September.