[susan53]

OK - here are my answers to your grammar questions :

1. The following are possible:

a) The story ends sadly when the canary dies - Fine. The story is always the same - a "permanent" event - so the present simple is appropriate


b) The story ended sadly when the canary died. If you want to present the sentence as being your experience of the story, rather than a recount of the plot itself, then the past tense is appropriate as you've finished the book. But in this case both verbs must be past.

c) The story ends sadly with the death of the canary. Notice that you need the article

d) The story ends sadly with the canary's death - Fine


2.a)The nail brought back the sweet memories of the bird to Missus. This is grammatically incorrect as "the" is not needed and odd because you can't use "Missus" like that. It's old fashioned (the story was written in 1923) and notice that it's used by the character in direct speech to refer to herself, aping what her lodgers call her. It's not a descriptive term used by the writer. So :

The nail brought back sweet memories of the bird to the narrator. or, if you prefer, ...to the woman.

b) Incorrect word order. It should be I]The nail brought sweet memories of the bird back to her[/i]

3. [A biography of Katherine Mansfield or The Life of Katherine Mansfield. You can't shorten it. The shorter forms you mention would be fine if you were speaking about it, but inappropriate for a title of a piece of written discourse.