Jean Rhys
born Aug. 24, 1890, Roseau, Dominica,
Windward Islands, West Indies
died May 14, 1979, Exeter, Devon, Eng.
West Indian novelist who earned acclaim
for her early works set in the bohemian
world of Europe in the 1920s and ’30s but
who stopped writing for nearly three
decades, until she wrote a successful novel
set in the West Indies.
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 (1927), was followed
by such novels as Postures (1928), After
Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (1931), Voyage in the
Dark (1934), and Good Morning, Midnight
(1939).
After moving to Cornwall she wrote
nothing until her remarkably successful Wide
Sargasso Sea (1966), a novel that
reconstructed the earlier life of the
fictional character Antoinette Cosway, who
was Mr. Rochester’s mad first wife in
Charlotte Brontė’s Jane Eyre. Tigers Are
Better-Looking, with a Selection from the
Left Bank (1968) and Sleep It Off Lady
(1976), both short-story collections,
followed. Smile Please, an unfinished
autobiography, was published in 1979.
