Jean Rhys

 Literature / Writer's Datebook: August 24

Brief biography of Dominican-born British novelist and short story writer Jean Rhys, whose fiction echoes her childhood, best known for Wide Sargasso Sea.

Jean Rhys has come to be recognized as one of the finest British writers of recent times. She is famous for Wide Sargasso Sea, and also wrote the notable Good morning Midnight and The Left Bank, a collection of short stories. 

 

Early Life of Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys was born Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, August 24, 1894, on the island of Roseau, Dominica, West Indies. Her father was a Welsh doctor, and her mother was a native Creole islander. As a child she loved literature and longed to visit England and the other places she read about.

At the age of 16, her father sent her to London so that she could study acting at the Royal Academic of Dramatic Arts. His death the same year meant that she had to leave before completing the course and get a job with a touring company to support herself.

In 1919 she moved to Paris, although she wandered in Paris and London to seek jobs. She eventually married the first of her three husbands.

 

Rhys the Short Story Writer and Novelist

From 1927 until 1939, Rhys produced a series of successful short stories and novels about life in Paris and London. Her first book, The Left Bank, is a collection of short stories which was published when she was 33. Ford Madox Ford, her literary mentor,  wrote the introduction of The Left Bank and helped Rhys in the book promotion.

Almost all of her stories from this period are about women who have been mistreated or had unfortunate lives. To support herself as a writer, she also worked as a translator, tutor and model.

After the publication of her novel Good Morning Midnight in 1939, and for almost three decades, she wrote nothing more. With her work almost completely forgotten, Jean Rhys lived quietly in Cornwall.

 

Later Years of Rhys

Rhys finished her most famous novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, at the age of 72. This book is set in Dominica and tells the early life story of Mrs. Rochester – the mysterious mad wife of Mr. Rochester, hero of Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel, Jane Eyre.

Wide Sargasso Sea was an immediate success and brought about a revival of interest in Jean Rhys’s earlier books.  She died on May 14, 1979, at the age of 84. Her West Indies childhood reverberates through her fiction.  

 

Books by Jean Rhys

The Left Bank, 1927

Quartet, 1928

After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, 1930

Voyage in the Dark, 1934

Good Morning Midnight, 1939

Wide Sargasso Sea, 1966

Tigers are Better-Looking, 1968

Sleep it Off, Lady, 1976

Smile, Please, 1979, (Published after Rhys died) 

 

Image Credit:

Jean Rhys (Left) and Mollie Stoner in the 1970s. Wikimedia Commons. 

 

Resources:

McGovern, Una, Ed. Chambers Biographical Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers, 2002

Ousby, Ian.  The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Uglow, Jennifer, Compiler & Editor, revised by Maggy Hendry. The Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography, 3^rd Edition. London: Macmillan Publishers, 1999

 

(c) August 2010. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.