Her grand attempt to tell what she felt was the story of "Jane Eyre's" 'madwoman in the attic', Bertha Rochester, Jean Rhys' "Wide Sargasso Sea" is edited with an introduction and notes by Angela Smith in "Penguin Classics". Born into the oppressive, colonialist society of 1930s Jamaica, white Creol[...]

An unforgettable portrait of a woman bravely confronting loneliness and despair in her quest for self-determination, Jean Rhys' "Good Morning Midnight" includes an introduction by A.L. Kennedy in "Penguin Modern Classics". In 1930s Paris, where one cheap hotel room is very like another, a young woma[...]

Inspired by Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre", "Wide Sargasso Sea" is set in 1830's Jamaica. Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality. After their marriage, however, disturbing rumour[...]

"There is no looking glass here and I don't know what I am like now… Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in this place and who am I?"

If Antoinette Cosway, a spirited Creole heiress, could have foreseen the terrible future that awaited her, she would not have marrie[...]

Sasha Jensen has returned to Paris, the city of both her happiest moments and her most desperate. Her past lies in wait for her in cafes, bars, and dress shops, blurring all distinctions between nightmare and reality. When she is picked up by a young man, she begins to feel that she is still capable[...]

Rhys's voice is starkly simple, yet sharp as nails. Autobiographically inspired, Rhys created stories of the slightly adrift everywoman looking for an anchor in a cold, hostile landscape.[...]

Julia Martin is at the end of her rope in Paris. Once beautiful, she was taken care of by men. Now after leaving her last lover, she is running out of luck and chances. A visit to London to see her ailing mother and distrustful sister bring her stark life into full focus. A masterful and terrifying [...]

Since her death in 1979, Jean Rhys's reputation as an important modernist author has grown. Her finely crafted prose fiction lends itself to multiple interpretations from radically different critical perspectives; formalism, feminism, and postcolonial studies among them. This Introduction offers a r[...]

"An acute literary intelligence ...the reader comes to trust instinctively Angier's assessments." ("New York Times"). Jean Rhys (1890-1979) had a long life of great difficulty. So inept was she in its management that her authority as the writer of five beautifully shaped and controlled novels appear[...]

Presents new critical perspectives on Jean Rhys in relation to modernism, postcolonialism, and theories of affect. The 11 newly commissioned essays collected in this volume demonstrate Jean Rhys's centrality to modernism and to postcolonial literature alike by addressing her stories and novels from [...]

Carl Plasa provides a survey and analysis of critical responses to Wide Sargasso Sea. The opening chapter outlines initial reactions to the novel. Chapter Two explores Wide Sargasso Sea's dialogue with Jane Eyre and the questions it has raised. Succeeding chapters examine how critics have assessed t[...]