biography
| name: |
Rhys, Jean
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| |
pseudonym of Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams
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pronunciation:
[rees]
| sex:
| female
|
| lived:
| (1894–1979)
|
| biography:
| Novelist, born in Roseau, Dominica. She moved to England in 1910 to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London, but her father's death after only one term obliged her to join a touring theatre company. After World War 1, she lived in Paris, where she wrote short stories and several novels on the theme of female vulnerability, including The Left Bank (1927), After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1931), and Good Morning Midnight (1939). Returning to Cornwall, she lived in retirement for nearly 30 years, then published in 1966 her best-known novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, a ‘prequel’ to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Further short stories followed in 1968 and 1976, and an autobiography, Smile Please, was published posthumously in 1979. |
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