{"title":"Books by Jean Rhys","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780141182858","title":"Wide Sargasso Sea","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eOne of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Rhys took one of the works of genius of the 19th Century and turned it  inside-out to create one of the works of genius of the 20th Century' Michele Roberts\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJean Rhys's masterpiece tells the story of \u003ci\u003eJane Eyre's\u003c\/i\u003e 'madwoman in the attic', Bertha Rochester.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBorn into the oppressive, colonialist society of 1930s Jamaica, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality. After their marriage, however, disturbing rumours begin to circulate which poison her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is inexorably driven towards madness, and her husband into the arms of another novel's heroine. This classic study of betrayal, a seminal work of postcolonial literature, is Jean Rhys's brief, beautiful masterpiece.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Edited with an introduction and notes by Angela Smith\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43201415086258,"sku":"9780141182858","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":57688218435957,"sku":"9780241281901","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141182858_1db8d3db-f498-4ea6-9545-b54808e145d9.jpg?v=1792686151"},{"product_id":"9780141185422","title":"Modern Classics Wide Sargasso Sea","description":"\u003cb\u003eOne of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Rhys took one of the works of genius of the 19th Century and turned it  inside-out to create one of the works of genius of the 20th Century' Michele Roberts\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJean Rhys's masterpiece tells the story of \u003ci\u003eJane Eyre's\u003c\/i\u003e 'madwoman in the attic', Bertha Rochester.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBorn into the oppressive, colonialist society of 1930s Jamaica, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality. After their marriage, however, disturbing rumours begin to circulate which poison her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is inexorably driven towards madness, and her husband into the arms of another novel's heroine. This classic study of betrayal, a seminal work of postcolonial literature, is Jean Rhys's brief, beautiful masterpiece.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEdited with an introduction and notes by Angela Smith\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201423802546,"sku":"9780141185422","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141185422.jpg?v=1786011387"},{"product_id":"9780141183930","title":"Modern Classics Good Morning Midnight","description":"\u003cb\u003eJean Rhys's \u003ci\u003eGood Morning Midnight\u003c\/i\u003e is an unforgettable portrait of a woman bravely confronting loneliness and despair in her quest for self-determination\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eIn 1930s Paris, where one cheap hotel room is very like another, a young woman is teaching herself indifference. She has escaped personal tragedy and has come to France to find courage and seek independence. She tells herself to expect nothing, especially not kindness, least of all from men. Tomorrow, she resolves, she will dye her hair blonde. Jean Rhys was a talent before her time with an impressive ability to express the anguish of young women. In \u003ci\u003eGood Morning, Midnight\u003c\/i\u003e Rhys created the powerfully modern portrait of Sophia Jansen, whose emancipation is far more painful and complicated than she could expect, but whose confession is flecked with triumph and elation. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith an introduction by A.L. Kennedy \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Her eloquence in the language of human sexual transactions is chilling, cynical, and surprisingly moving'\u003cbr\u003eA.L. Kennedy","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201478262962,"sku":"9780141183930","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141183930.jpg?v=1786011300"},{"product_id":"9780141183954","title":"Modern Classics Voyage in the Dark","description":"\u003cb\u003e'A wonderful bitter-sweet book, written with disarming simplicity' Esther Freud\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'It was as if a curtain had fallen, hiding everything I had ever known,' says Anna Morgan, eighteen years old and catapulted to England from the West Indies after the death of her beloved father. Working as a chorus girl, Anna drifts into the \u003ci\u003edemi-monde\u003c\/i\u003e of Edwardian London. But there, dismayed by the unfamiliar cold and greyness, she is absolutely alone and unconsciously floating from innocence to harsh experience. Her childish dreams have been replaced by harsh reality. \u003ci\u003eVoyage in the Dark\u003c\/i\u003e was first published in 1934, but it could have been written today. It is the story of an unhappy love affair, a portrait of a hypocritical society, and an exploration of exile and breakdown; all written in Jean Rhys's hauntingly simple and beautiful style.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201478295730,"sku":"9780141183954","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141183954.jpg?v=1786011302"},{"product_id":"9780241951552","title":"Penguin Essentials Wide Sargasso Sea","description":"\u003cb\u003eOne of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World'\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJean Rhys's spell-binding novel \u003ci\u003eWide Sargasso Sea\u003c\/i\u003e, inspired by Jane Eyre and winner the Royal Society of Literature Award is beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'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?'\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf Antoinette Cosway, a spirited Creole heiress, could have foreseen the terrible future that awaited her, she would not have married the young Englishman. Initially drawn to her beauty and sensuality, he becomes increasingly frustrated by his inability to reach into her soul. He forces Antoinette to conform to his rigid Victorian ideals, unaware that in taking away her identity he is destroying a part of himself as well as pushing her towards madness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSet against the lush backdrop of 1830s Jamaica, Jean Rhys's powerful, haunting masterpiece was inspired by her fascination with the first Mrs Rochester, the mad wife in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Compelling, painful and exquisite' \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Brilliant. A tale of dislocation and dispossession, which Rhys writes with a kind of romantic cynicism, desperate and pungent' \u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Rhys turns a menacing cipher into a grieving, plausible young woman, and one whose story says whole worlds about global mixtures, about the misunderstandings between the colonized, the colonizers and the people who can't easily say which they are' \u003ci\u003eTime\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJean Rhys was born in Dominica in 1890, the daughter of a Welsh doctor and a white Creole mother, and came to England when she was sixteen. Her first book, a collection of stories called \u003ci\u003eThe Left Bank\u003c\/i\u003e, was published in 1927. This was followed by \u003ci\u003eQuartet\u003c\/i\u003e (originally Postures, 1928), \u003ci\u003eAfter Leaving Mr Mackenzie\u003c\/i\u003e (1930), \u003ci\u003eVoyage in the Dark\u003c\/i\u003e (1934) and \u003ci\u003eGood Morning, Midnight\u003c\/i\u003e (1939). None of these books was particularly successful and with the outbreak of war they went out of print. Jean Rhys dropped from sight until nearly twenty years later she was discovered living reclusively in Cornwall. During those years she had accumulated the stories collected in \u003ci\u003eTigers are Better-Looking\u003c\/i\u003e. In 1966 she made a sensational reappearance with \u003ci\u003eWide Sargasso Sea\u003c\/i\u003e, which won the Royal Society of Literature Award and the W. H. Smith Award. Her final collection of stories, \u003ci\u003eSleep It Off Lady\u003c\/i\u003e, appeared in 1976 and \u003ci\u003eSmile Please\u003c\/i\u003e, her unfinished autobiography, was published posthumously in 1979. Jean Rhys died in 1979.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201650720946,"sku":"9780241951552","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780241951552_b997f198-c15f-4a42-83e6-423d2d08699a.jpg?v=1786012262"},{"product_id":"9780141183923","title":"Quartet","description":"\u003cp\u003eJean Rhys's first novel, a heartbreaking and disturbingly intimate portrayal of an isolated woman in Paris\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSet in a superficially romantic, between-wars Paris, \u003ci\u003eQuartet\u003c\/i\u003e is a poignant tale of a lonely woman. Set against a background of winter-wet streets, Pernod in smoky cafes and cheap hotel rooms with mauve- flowered wallpaper, Marya tries to make something substantial of her life in order to withstand the unreality of her surroundings. Alone, her Polish husband in prison, she is taken up by an English couple who slowly overwhelm her with their passions.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43399232716978,"sku":"9780141183923","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141183923_e8a081e8-97d9-4d73-ae09-64329ccc0792.jpg?v=1786011298"},{"product_id":"9780141183947","title":"After Leaving Mr Mackenzie","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA brilliant, yet brutal, portrait of a woman struggling to retrieve both life and love, from the author of\u003ci\u003e Wide Sargasso Sea\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor six months, Julia has lived alone in a drab Parisian hotel on an allowance from her ex-lover, Mr. Mackenzie. When his cheques stop, Julia decides to leave France and return to London. The tale of her ten day visit contains some of Jean Rhys's most sensitive, poignant writing. Past her prime, exhausted by broken love affairs and addled by drink, Julia is tragically unable to find what she really wants - love.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56224389628277,"sku":"9780141183947","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141183947_3147185e-13f8-498d-b33b-c92bb2928f07.jpg?v=1786011301"},{"product_id":"9780141984858","title":"The Collected Short Stories","description":"\u003cb\u003eNew to Penguin Classics, the remarkable, devastating collected stories by the author of \u003ci\u003eWide Sargasso Sea.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSome of Jean Rhys's most powerful writing is to be found in this rich, dark collection of her collected stories. Her fictional world is haunted by her own, painful memories: of cheap hotels and drab Parisian cafés; of devastating love affairs; of her childhood in Dominica; of drifting through European cities, always on the periphery and always perilously close to the abyss. Rendered in extraordinarily vivid, honest prose, these stories show Rhys at the height of her literary powers and offer a fascinating counterpoint to her most famous novel, \u003ci\u003eWide Sargasso Sea\u003c\/i\u003e. This volume includes all the stories from her three collections,\u003ci\u003eThe Left Bank \u003c\/i\u003e(1927), \u003ci\u003eTigers Are Better-Looking\u003c\/i\u003e (1968) and \u003ci\u003eSleep It Off, Lady \u003c\/i\u003e(1976).","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56224642761077,"sku":"9780141984858","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141984858_a8920f99-ab0a-4ef8-b583-a805fe066a61.jpg?v=1786011068"},{"product_id":"9780141984544","title":"Smile Please","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA brilliant companion piece to \u003ci\u003eWide Sargasso Sea\u003c\/i\u003e, this is Jean Rhys's beautifully written, bitter-sweet autobiography, covering her chequered early years in Dominica, England and Paris.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJean Rhys wrote this autobiography in her old age, now the celebrated author of \u003ci\u003eWide Sargasso Sea \u003c\/i\u003ebut still haunted by memories of her troubled past: her precarious jobs on chorus lines and relationships with unsuitable men, her enduring sense of isolation and her decision at last to become a writer. From the early days on Dominica to the bleak time in England, living in bedsits on gin and little else, to Paris with her first husband, this is a lasting memorial to a unique artist.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIncludes an introduction by Diana Athill.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311576068469,"sku":"9780141984544","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141984544_1317ee8a-78d5-4bad-9a2c-17faaf13876b.jpg?v=1786011052"},{"product_id":"wide-sargasso-sea","title":"Wide Sargasso Sea","description":"Jean Rhys's late, literary masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea was inspired by Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and is set in the lush, beguiling landscape of Jamaica in the 1830s. Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent sensuality and beauty. After their marriage the rumours begin, poisoning her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is driven towards madness.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57536434209141,"sku":"9780241871065","price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-jean-rhys.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}