Jean Rhys - Wikipedia Jean Rhys From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Novelist from Dominica Jean Rhys CBE Jean Rhys and Mollie Stoner in the 1970s Born (1890-08-24)24 August 1890 Roseau or Grand Bay, British Leeward Islands (now Dominica) Died 14 May 1979(1979-05-14) (aged 88) Exeter, Britain Occupation Novelist, short story writer, essayist Nationality Dominican Genre Modernism, postmodernism[1][2] Notable works Good Morning, Midnight Wide Sargasso Sea Spouse Jean Lenglet ​ ​ (m. 1919; div. 1933)​ Leslie Tilden-Smith ​ ​ (m. 1934; died 1945)​ Max Hamer ​ ​ (m. 1947; died 1966)​ Children 2 Jean Rhys, CBE (/riːs/;[3] born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams (24 August 1890 – 14 May 1979), was a mid-20th-century novelist who was born and grew up in the Caribbean island of Dominica. From the age of 16, she was mainly resident in England, where she was sent for her education. She is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), written as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.[4] In 1978, she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for her writing. Contents 1 Early life 2 Marriage and family 3 Writing career 4 Later years 5 Death 6 Legacy and honours 6.1 Archives 7 Selected bibliography 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links Early life[edit] Rhys's father, William Rees Williams, was a Welsh doctor and her mother, Minna Williams, née Lockhart, a third-generation Dominican Creole of Scots ancestry. ("Creole" was broadly used in those times to refer to any person born on the island, whether they were of European or African descent, or both.) She had a brother. Her mother's family had an estate, a former plantation, on the island. Rhys was educated in Dominica until the age of 16, when she was sent to England to live with an aunt, as her relations with her mother were difficult. She attended the Perse School for Girls in Cambridge,[5] where she was mocked as an outsider and for her accent. She attended two terms at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London by 1909. Her instructors despaired of her ever learning to speak "proper English" and advised her father to take her away. Unable to train as an actress and refusing to return to the Caribbean as her parents wished, Williams worked with varied success as a chorus girl, adopting the names Vivienne, Emma, or Ella Gray. She toured Britain's small towns and returned to rooming or boarding houses in rundown neighbourhoods of London.[5] After her father died in 1910, Rhys appeared to have experimented with living as a demimondaine. She became the mistress of wealthy stockbroker Lancelot Grey Hugh Smith, whose father Hugh Colin Smith had been Governor of the Bank of England.[6] Though a bachelor, Smith did not offer to marry Rhys, and their affair soon ended. However, he continued to be an occasional source of financial help. Distraught by events, including a near-fatal abortion (not Smith's child), Rhys began writing and produced an early version of her novel Voyage in the Dark.[5] In 1913, she was self-employed for a time in London. During the First World War, Rhys served as a volunteer worker in a soldiers' canteen. In 1918, she worked in a pension office. Marriage and family[edit] In 1919, Rhys married Willem Johan Marie (Jean) Lenglet, a French-Dutch journalist, spy, and songwriter. He was the first of her three husbands.[5] She and Lenglet wandered through Europe. They had two children, a son who died young and a daughter. They divorced in 1933, and her daughter lived mostly with her father. The next year, Rhys married Leslie Tilden-Smith, an English editor. In 1936, they went briefly to Dominica, the first time Rhys had returned since she had left for school. She found her family estate deteriorating and island conditions less agreeable. Her brother Oscar was living in England, and she took care of some financial affairs for him, making a settlement with a mixed-race woman on the island and Oscar's illegitimate children by her. In 1937, Rhys began a friendship with novelist Eliot Bliss (who had taken her first name in honour of two authors she admired). The two women shared Caribbean backgrounds. The correspondence between them survives.[7] In 1939, Rhys and Tilden-Smith moved to Devon, where they lived for several years. He died in 1945. In 1947, Rhys married Max Hamer, a solicitor who was a cousin of Tilden-Smith. He was convicted of fraud and imprisoned after their marriage.[8] He died in 1966. Writing career[edit] In 1924, Rhys came under the influence of English writer Ford Madox Ford. After meeting Ford in Paris, Rhys wrote short stories under his patronage. Ford recognised that her experience as an exile gave Rhys a unique viewpoint, and praised her "singular instinct for form". "Coming from the West Indies, [Ford] declared, 'with a terrifying insight and... passion for stating the case of the underdog, she has let her pen loose on the Left Banks of the Old World'."[5] This he wrote in his preface to her debut short story collection, The Left Bank and Other Stories (1927). It was Ford who suggested she change her name from Ella Williams to Jean Rhys.[9] At the time her husband was in jail for what Rhys described as currency irregularities. Rhys moved in with Ford and his long-time partner Stella Bowen. An affair with Ford ensued, which she portrayed in fictionalised form in her novel Quartet (1928).[9] Her protagonist is a stranded foreigner, Marya Zelli, who finds herself at the mercy of strangers when her husband is jailed in Paris. The 1981 film adaptation of the novel, produced by Merchant Ivory Productions, starred Maggie Smith, Isabelle Adjani, Anthony Higgins, and Alan Bates. In After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (1931), the protagonist, Julia Martin, is a more unravelled version of Marya Zelli, romantically dumped and inhabiting the sidewalks, cafes and cheap hotel rooms of Paris. With Voyage in the Dark (1934), Rhys continued to portray a mistreated, rootless woman. Here the narrator, Anna, is a young chorus girl who grew up in the West Indies and feels alienated in England. Good Morning, Midnight (1939) is often considered a continuation of Rhys's first two novels. Here, she uses modified stream of consciousness to voice the experiences of an ageing woman, Sasha Jansen, who drinks, takes sleeping pills, and obsesses over her looks, and is adrift again in Paris. Good Morning, Midnight, acknowledged as well written but deemed depressing, came as World War II broke out and readers sought optimism. This seemingly ended Rhys's literary career. In the 1940s, Rhys largely withdrew from public life. From 1955 to 1960, she lived in Bude, Cornwall, where she was unhappy, calling it "Bude the Obscure", before moving to Cheriton Fitzpaine, a small village in Devon. After a long absence from the public eye, she was rediscovered by Selma Vaz Dias, who in 1949, placed an advertisement in the New Statesman asking about her whereabouts, with a view to obtaining the rights to adapt her novel Good Morning, Midnight for radio. Rhys responded, and thereafter developed a long-lasting and collaborative friendship with Vaz Dias, who encouraged her to start writing again. This encouragement ultimately led to the publication in 1966 of her critically acclaimed novel Wide Sargasso Sea. She intended it as an account of the woman whom Rochester married and kept in his attic in Jane Eyre. Begun well before she settled in Bude, the book won the notable WH Smith Literary Award in 1967. She returned to themes of dominance and dependence, especially in marriage, depicting the mutually painful relationship between a privileged English man and a Creole woman from Dominica made powerless on being duped and coerced by him and others. Both the man and the woman enter marriage under mistaken assumptions about the other partner. Her female lead marries Mr. Rochester and deteriorates in England as the "madwoman in the attic". Rhys portrays this woman from a quite different perspective from the one in Jane Eyre. Diana Athill of André Deutsch gambled on publishing Wide Sargasso Sea. She and the writer Francis Wyndham helped to revive interest in Rhys's work.[10] There have been film, operatic and radio adaptations of the book.[11][12][13] [14] In 1968, André Deutsch published a collection of Rhys' short stories, Tigers Are Better-Looking, of which eight were written during her 1950s period of obscurity and nine republished from her 1927 collection The Left Bank and Other Stories. Her 1969 short story "I Spy a Stranger", published by Penguin Modern Stories, was adapted for TV in 1972 for the BBC's Thirty-Minute Theatre starring Mona Washbourne, Noel Dyson, Hanah Maria Pravda, and Basil Dignam.[15][16] In 1976, Deutsch published another collection of her short stories, Sleep It Off Lady, consisting of 16 pieces from an approximately 75-year period, starting from the end of the 19th century. Later years[edit] From 1960, and for the rest of her life, Rhys lived in Cheriton Fitzpaine in Devon that she once described as "a dull spot which even drink can't enliven much."[17] Characteristically, she remained unimpressed by her belated ascent to literary fame, commenting, "It has come too late."[10] In an interview shortly before her death she questioned whether any novelist, not least herself, could ever be happy for any length of time: "If I could choose I would rather be happy than write... if I could live my life all over again, and choose...."[18] Death[edit] Jean Rhys died in Exeter on 14 May 1979, at the age of 88, before completing an autobiography, which she had begun dictating only months earlier.[19][20] In 1979, the incomplete text was published posthumously under the title Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography. Legacy and honours[edit] In a 1974 New York Times Book Review written appreciation, A. Alvarez called Jean Rhys “quite simply, the best living English novelist".[21] Jean Rhys was appointed a CBE in the 1978 New Year Honours. The 2003 book and stage play After Mrs Rochester by Polly Teale is based on the life of Jean Rhys and her most famous book, Wide Sargasso Sea.[22] In 2012, English Heritage marked her Chelsea flat at Paulton House in Paultons Square with a blue plaque.[23] In 2020, a pen owned by Rhys (with another owned by Andrea Levy) was added to the Royal Society of Literature's historic collection for the signing of their Roll Book.[24] Archives[edit] Rhys's collected papers and ephemera are housed in the University of Tulsa's McFarlin Library.[25] The British Library acquired a selection of Jean Rhys Papers in 1972, including drafts of short stories, novels; After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, Voyage in the Dark, and Wide Sargasso Sea, and an unpublished play entitled English Harbour.[26] Research material relating to Jean Rhys can also be found in the Archive of Margaret Ramsey Ltd at the British Library relating to stage and film rights for adaptations to her work.[27] Selected bibliography[edit] The Left Bank and Other Stories, 1927 Postures, novel, 1928 (published in the US as Quartet, 1929) After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, novel, 1931 Voyage in the Dark, novel, 1934 Good Morning, Midnight, novel, 1939 Wide Sargasso Sea, novel, 1966 Tigers Are Better-Looking: With a Selection from 'The Left Bank' , stories, 1968 Penguin Modern Stories 1 (with Bernard Malamud, David Plante, and William Sansom), 1969 My Day: Three Pieces, stories, 1975 Sleep It Off Lady, stories, 1976 Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography, 1979 Jean Rhys: Letters 1931–1966, 1984 Early Novels, 1984 The Complete Novels, 1985 Tales of the Wide Caribbean, stories, 1985 The Collected Short Stories, 1987 Let Them Call It Jazz, stories, 1995 References[edit] ^ Gardiner, Judith Kegan (Autumn 1982 – Winter 1983). "Good Morning, Midnight; Good Night, Modernism". Boundary 2. 11 (1/2): 233–51. doi:10.2307/303027. JSTOR 303027. ^ Castro, Joy (Summer 2000). "Jean Rhys" (PDF). The Review of Contemporary Fiction. XX (2): 8–46. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 December 2014. ^ "Collins English Dictionary: Definition of Rhys". Collins. Retrieved 31 December 2015. ^ Modjeska, Drusilla (1999). Stravinsky's Lunch. Sydney: Picador. ISBN 0-330-36259-3. ^ a b c d e Carr, Helen (2004). "Williams, Ella Gwendoline Rees (1890–1979)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press. ^ "Lancelot Grey Hugh SMITH". genealogy.links.org. Retrieved 14 March 2020. ^ McFarlin Library Retrieved 17 September 2015. Archived 27 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine Bliss is quoted on their relations in Alexandra Pringle's introduction to the 1984 reissue of Bliss's novel Luminous Isle: "She used to make me delightful West-Indian suppers, and we used to drink an awful lot. Well, she could hold it, but it used to make me ill, frequently ill. And she had a delightful husband who used to leave us, go out. Well, often he would come home and find us drunk. He once picked her off the floor. And he was furious if he found we'd drunk his wine." ^ "Kent: From Maidstone Prison to the Wide Sargasso Sea!" Archived 3 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Reading Detectives. ^ a b Owen, Katie, "Introduction", Quartet, Penguin Modern Classics edition, Penguin, 2000, p. vi. ISBN 978-0-14-118392-3 ^ a b Preliminary page in Jean Rhys, Quartet, Penguin: 2000, ISBN 978-0-14-118392-3 ^ Brian Kellow,"On the Beat: A novel that sings: Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea", Opera News, December 2012 — Vol. 77, No. 6. ^ "Jean Rhys – Wide Sargasso Sea", RadioListings. ^ "Jean Rhys – Wide Sargasso Sea", BBC Radio 4 Extra. ^ "Wide Sargasso Sea", Drama, BBC Radio 4. ^ Rhys, Jean; Melly, Diana; Wyndham, Francis (1984). Letters, 1931-1966 Jean Rhys ; Selected and ed. by Francis Wyndham and Diana Melly. ISBN 978-0-233-97567-2. OCLC 251855018. ^ "Thirty-Minute Theatre" I Spy a Stranger (TV Episode 1972) – IMDb, retrieved 1 May 2020 ^ "Villagers Reject 'Dull Spot' Jibe" Archived 21 November 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Exeter Express & Echo, 11 February 2010. ^ In Their Own Words: British Novelists. Ep. 1: Among the Ruins (1919–1939). BBC (2010). ^ Mitgang, Herbert (17 May 1979). "Jean Rhys, 84, Novelist Known for 'sargasso Sea'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 24 April 2020. ^ Lisa Paravisini, "BBC Interviews Jean Rhys's Typist", Repeating Islands, 14 May 2009. ^ Alvarez, A. (17 March 1974). "The Best Living English Novelist". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 14 March 2020. ^ Teale, Polly (2003). After Mrs Rochester: a play. London: Nick Hern. ISBN 1-85459-745-0. OCLC 52145874. ^ "Rhys, Jean (1880–1979)". English Heritage. Retrieved 6 January 2012. ^ Flood, Alison (30 November 2020). "Royal Society of Literature reveals historic changes to improve diversity". The Guardian. ^ "Collection: Jean Rhys archive, 1920–1991 | ArchivesSpace Public Interface". utulsa.as.atlas-sys.com. Retrieved 23 October 2017. ^ Jean Rhys Papers, archives and manuscripts catalogue, the British Library. Retrieved 13 May 2020 ^ Archive of Margaret Ramsay Ltd, archives and manuscripts catalogue, the British Library. Retrieved 13 May 2020. Further reading[edit] Angier, Carol, Jean Rhys. Life and Work, Little, Brown and Co., 1990. Dash, Cheryl M. L., "Jean Rhys", in Bruce King, ed., West Indian Literature, Macmillan, 1979, pp. 196–209. Joseph, Margaret Paul, Caliban in Exile: The Outsider in Caribbean Fiction, Greenwood Press, 1992. Lykiard, Alexis, Jean Rhys Revisited, Stride Publications, 2000. ISBN 1-900152-68-1 Lykiard, Alexis, Jean Rhys Afterwords, Shoestring Press, 2006. External links[edit] Elizabeth Vreeland (Fall 1979). "Jean Rhys, The Art of Fiction No. 64". The Paris Review. Literary Encyclopedia biography Jean Rhys bio, with particular reference to her time in Dominica "Jean Rhys Archive", University of Tulsa McFarlin Library, Department of Special Collections and University Archives Jean Rhys Papers, the British Library Biography of Jean Rhys by Dominican historian Lennox Honychurch London Fictions article on 'After Leaving Mr Mackenzie' by literary historian Susie Thomas Authority control BIBSYS: 90067577 BNE: XX1128345 BNF: cb11921766c (data) CiNii: DA02696041 GND: 118600184 ICCU: IT\ICCU\CFIV\045495 ISNI: 0000 0001 1827 8981 LCCN: n80013225 LNB: 000180930 NDL: 00473716 NKC: jn20000701499 NLA: 36580863 NLI: 000320166 NLK: KAC200408611 NLP: A2562023X NSK: 000006067 NTA: 070132739 PLWABN: 9810613136905606 SELIBR: 222425 SNAC: w6ng62q2 SUDOC: 027097579 Trove: 381909 VIAF: 317283186 WorldCat Identities: lccn-n80013225 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jean_Rhys&oldid=1001708668" Categories: 1890 births 1979 deaths Caribbean women writers Alumni of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art British women novelists People educated at The Perse School People educated at the Perse School for Girls Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Dominica women writers Dominica novelists Dominica people of British descent 20th-century British novelists 20th-century British women writers Modernist women writers Modernist writers British women short story writers People from Roseau 20th-century British short story writers Hidden categories: Webarchive template wayback links Articles with short description Short description matches Wikidata EngvarB from February 2018 Use dmy dates from February 2018 Pages using Template:Post-nominals with missing parameters Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNE identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Wikipedia articles with CINII identifiers Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with ICCU identifiers Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with LNB identifiers Wikipedia articles with NDL identifiers Wikipedia articles with NKC identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLA identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLI identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLK identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLP identifiers Wikipedia articles with NSK identifiers Wikipedia articles with NTA identifiers Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Languages العربية تۆرکجه Български Català Cymraeg Dansk Deutsch Español Euskara فارسی Français Galego 한국어 Հայերեն Hrvatski Italiano עברית Mirandés Nederlands 日本語 Norsk bokmål Polski Português Română Русский Simple English Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Suomi Svenska Tiếng Việt 粵語 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 20 January 2021, at 23:21 (UTC). 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