One of the "100 Novels That Shaped the World" by BBC, Jean Rhys's enchanting novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, inspired by Jane Eyre and awarded the Royal Society of Literature Prize, is beautifully reissued as part of the Penguin Essentials series.
"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 passionate Creole heiress, could foresee the terrifying future awaiting her, she would not marry the young Englishman. Initially captivated by her beauty and sexuality, he becomes increasingly disillusioned by his inability to penetrate her soul. He forces her to adapt to his strict Victorian ideas, not knowing that by stripping away her identity, he destroys a piece of himself and drives her towards madness.
Set against the lush backdrop of 1830s Jamaica, Jean Rhys's powerful and haunting masterpiece is inspired by her obsession with the first Mrs Rochester, the mad wife of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.
"Astonishing, painful and exquisite" - Guardian
"Extraordinary. A lament for displacement and loss, by a Rhys at once romantic, despairing, and caustic" - The Times
"Rhys turns an ominous cipher into a lyrical, believable young woman, whose story tells whole worlds about the misinterpretations between the colonizers, the colonized, and those who can't easily say who they are" - Time
Jean 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 titled The Left Bank, was published in 1927. It was followed by Quartet (originally Postures, 1928), After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1930), Voyage in the Dark (1934), and Good Morning, Midnight (1939). None of these books was particularly successful, and with the outbreak of the war, they went out of print. Jean Rhys fell from view until nearly twenty years later she was discovered living in isolation in Cornwall. During these years she had amassed the stories that were to be published as Tigers are Better-Looking. In 1966 she made a spectacular return with Wide Sargasso Sea, which won the Royal Society of Literature Award and the W. H. Smith Award. Her last collection of stories, Sleep It Off Lady, appeared in 1976, and Smile Please, her unfinished autobiography, was published posthumously in 1979. Jean Rhys died in 1979.
Pages: 160, Dimensions: 11.1x11.1cm
