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Jean Rhys (1890–1979)

Author of Wide Sargasso Sea

Includes the names: D Athill, Jean Rhys, Jean Rhys, Jean Rhyss, ジーン リース, Jean; Introduced By Bel Mooney Rhys, Jean Introduction by Diana Athill Rhys

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Jean Rhys, 1890 - 1979 Writer Jean Rhys was born in Roseau, Dominica, West Indies. Her father was a Welsh doctor and her mother was a Dominican Creole. Her heritage deeply influenced her life as well as her writing. At seventeen, her father sent her to England to attend the Perse School, Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Unfortunately, she was forced to abandon her studies when her father died. Rhys worked as a chorus girl and ghostwrote a book on furniture. During World War I, she volunteered in a soldier canteen and, in 1918, worked in a pension office. In 1919, she went to Holland and married the French-Dutch journalist and songwriter Jean Langlet. They had two children, a daughter and a son who died as an infant. She began writing under the patronage of Ford Madox Ford. Her husband was sentenced to prison for illegal financial transactions. Her affair ended badly with Ford, and her marriage ended in divorce. In 1934, she married Leslie Tilden Smith who died in 1945. Two years later, she married Max Hamer who died in 1966. Rhys lived many years in the West Country, most often in great poverty. In 1927, Rhys' first collection of stories, "The Left Bank and Other Stories," was published. Her first novel, "Quartet" (1928), is considered to be an account of her affair with Ford Madox Ford told through Marya, a young English woman. In "Voyage in the Dark" (1934), the character is a young chorus girl involved with an older lover. She has also written "Good Morning, Midnight" (1939) and "Sleep It Off Lady" (1976) and the internationally acclaimed "Wide Sargasso Sea" (1960). Rhys was made a CBE in 1978 and received the W.H. Smith Award, the Royal Society of Literature Award and an Arts Council Bursart. Rhys died on May 14, 1979 in Exeter. In the same year, her unfinished autobiography "Smile Please" appeared. (Bowker Author Biography)
— biography from Wide Sargasso Sea
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Works by Jean Rhys
Wide Sargasso Sea 7,580 copies, 223 reviews
Good Morning, Midnight 1,247 copies, 31 reviews
Voyage in the Dark 725 copies, 14 reviews
After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie 597 copies, 11 reviews
Quartet 590 copies, 6 reviews
Wide Sargasso Sea [Norton Critical Edition] 571 copies, 12 reviews
Jean Rhys: The Complete Novels (Voyage in the Dark; Quartet; After Leaving… (Author) 311 copies, 1 review
Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography 226 copies, 2 reviews
Tigers Are Better-looking 212 copies, 4 reviews
Sleep It Off Lady 203 copies
The Collected Short Stories (Norton Paperback Fiction) 174 copies, 1 review
Let Them Call It Jazz 128 copies, 2 reviews
Jean Rhys: Letters 1931-1966 (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) 108 copies
Till September Petronella (Penguin Modern) 43 copies
Early Novels 27 copies
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Also by Jean Rhys
The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories (Contributor) 384 copies, 1 review
Nothing But You: Love Stories From The New Yorker (Contributor) 168 copies
Erotica: Women's Writing from Sappho to Margaret Atwood (Contributor) 157 copies
Mistresses of the Dark [Anthology] (Contributor) 113 copies, 3 reviews
The Big New Yorker Book of Cats (Contributor) 111 copies, 1 review
The Penguin Book of Modern Women's Short Stories (Contributor) 90 copies
The Virago Book of Ghost Stories Volume 2: The Twentieth Century (Contributor) 87 copies, 3 reviews
The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories (Contributor) 84 copies, 1 review
Women and Fiction: Volume 2 (Contributor) 68 copies
Nightshade: 20th Century Ghost Stories (Contributor) 62 copies, 2 reviews
The Gender of Modernism: A Critical Anthology (Contributor) 61 copies, 1 review
Perversity (Translator, some editions) 53 copies
An Omnibus of 20th Century Ghost Stories (Contributor) 45 copies
Her True-True Name : an anthology of women's writing from the Caribbean (Contributor) 35 copies
The Secret Self: A Century of Short Stories by Women (Contributor) 31 copies
Haunting Women (Contributor) 31 copies
Regarding "Jane Eyre" (Contributor) 16 copies
Gender in Modernism: New Geographies, Complex Intersections (Contributor) 11 copies, 1 review
Penguin Modern Stories 1 (Contributor) 11 copies, 1 review
Demons within, & other disturbing tales (Contributor) 5 copies
Wide Sargasso Sea [1993 film] (Original novel) 5 copies
Chill to the Sunlight: Tropical Stories of the Macabre (Contributor) 3 copies
早稲田文学増刊 女性号 (Contributor) 1 copy
Josefina, bedien die Herren : Geschichten von Frauen und Männern aus… (Contributor) 1 copy
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Common Knowledge
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Canonical name
Legal name
Rees William, Ella Gwendolen (born)
Other names
Vivienne Gray
Emma Gray
Ella Gray
Date of birth
1890-08-24
Date of death
1979-05-14
Burial location
Information from the Dutch Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
St. Matthew's Church Cheriton Fitzpaine, Mid Devon District, Devon, England
Gender
female
Nationality
UK
Country (for map)
Birthplace
Roseau, Dominica, West Indies
Place of death
Exeter, Devon, England, UK
Cause of death
Places of residence
London, England, UK
Cheriton Fitzpaine, Devon, England, UK
Paris, France
Vienna, Austria
Education
Perse School, Cambridge
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Occupations
novelist
short-story writer
autobiographer
essayist
nude model
Relationships
Williams, William Rees (father)
Williams, Minna (mother)
Lenglet, Willem Johan Marie (Jean) (first husband)
Tilden-Smith, Leslie (second husband)
Hamer, Max (third husband)
Organizations
American Academy of Arts and Letters (Foreign Honorary, Literature, 1979)
Awards and honors
Order of the British Empire (Commander, 1978)
Agents
Short biography
Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams wrote under the pseudonym Jean Rhys. She was born to a British-Creole family in the British colony of Dominica in the West Indies, and left the island in 1907. She began publishing her writing in the late 1920s. Her most famous work was Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which won the W.H. Smith Award and the Heinemann Award. In it, Rhys returned to her frequent themes of conflicting cultures, dominance and dependence. Jean Rhys died in Exeter, Devon, before finishing the autobiography she was working on. The incomplete text appeared posthumously under the title Smile Please (1979).
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