Novelist, born in Roseau, Dominica. She moved to England in 1910 to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London, but her father's death after only one term obliged her to join a touring theatre company. After World War 1, she lived in Paris, where she wrote short stories and several novels on the theme of female vulnerability, including The Left Bank (1927), After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1931), and Good Morning Midnight (1939). Returning to Cornwall, she lived in retirement for nearly 30 years, then published in 1966 her best-known novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, a prequel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Further short stories followed in 1968 and 1976, and an autobiography, Smile Please, was published posthumously in 1979.
Jean Rhys (August 24, 1890 - May 14, 1979), originally Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, was a Caribbean novelist who wrote in the mid 20th century. Her first four novels were published during the 1920s and 1930s, but it was not until the publication of Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966 that she emerged as a significant literary figure.
Rhys's writing often centers on the lives of women transplanted from their roots and left to die at the whims of unfamiliar societies—an obvious echo of her own life. Her work was published and promoted by Ford Madox Ford, among others. Diana Athill of Andre Deutsch's publishing house helped return Rhys' work to a wider audience after her writing had fallen out of favor and was responsible for choosing to publish Wide Sargasso Sea.
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