Jean Rhys
5
plain
2019-12-12T20:09:11-08:00
Jean Rhys, born Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, was born August 24, 1890. She was a West Indian novelist who earned acclaim for her early works set in the bohemian world of Europe in the 1920s and ’30s.
The daughter of a Welsh doctor and a Creole mother, Rhys lived and was educated in Dominica until she went to London at the age of 16 and worked as an actress before moving to Paris. There she was encouraged to write by the English novelist Ford Madox Ford. Her first book, a collection of short stories, The Left Bank, was followed by such novels as Postures, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, Voyage in the Dark, and Good Morning, Midnight.
After moving to Cornwall she wrote nothing until her remarkably successful novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, which reconstructed the earlier life of the fictional character Antoinette Cosway, who was Mr. Rochester's mad first wife in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.
Jean Rhys passed away on May 14, 1979, in Exeter, England.
Check out her books!
