Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys (1890–1979) was born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams in Roseau, Dominica, the daughter of a Welsh doctor and a white Creole mother. She left the Caribbean for England at sixteen, studied briefly at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and drifted through bohemian London and Paris, enduring poverty, failed marriages, and alcoholism. Her early novels—Quartet, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie, Voyage in the Dark, and Good Morning, Midnight—drew on her experiences as a displaced colonial woman in Europe but attracted little attention. This author hub collects 1 work in the Canon Compass ranking, led by Wide Sargasso Sea.