Jean Rhys – författare

Sargassohavet utspelar sig i det tidiga 1800-talets Västindien, mitt i den förrädiska naturens överdådiga grönska. Antoinette Cosway, en kreolsk arvtagerska, gifter sig med den unge engelsmannen Rochester, men hemska rykten börjar cirkulera vilka vänder honom mot henne. Antoinette drivs sakta men säkert mot galenskap. Sargassohavet är inspirerad av Charlotte Brontës Jane Eyre, och är ett försök att rent bokstavligt skriva om historien, men också ett enastående verk i sig självt. Denna postkoloniala klassiker görs nu åter tillgänglig för svenska läsare. Jean Rhys (1890-1979) hade länge antagits vara död, när hon plötsligt dök upp på den internationella scenen igen. Efter en kort litterär karriär under 20- och 30-talet, med böcker om unga kvinnor på drift i Paris och Londons undre värld, försvann hon helt från offentligheten. När Sargassohavet (Wide Sargasso Sea) publicerades 1966 blev boken en sensation, som också fick många att återupptäcka Rhys tidigare författarskap. Den kan beställas redan nu men levereras först i slutet av november. Sargassohavet har utnämnts till en av 1900-talets 100 bästa böcker av TIME Magazine.

Jean Rhys's Good Morning Midnight is an unforgettable portrait of a woman bravely confronting loneliness and despair in her quest for self-determinationIn 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 Good Morning, Midnight 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. With an introduction by A.L. Kennedy 'Her eloquence in the language of human sexual transactions is chilling, cynical, and surprisingly moving'A.L. Kennedy

One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World'Jean Rhys's spell-binding novel Wide Sargasso Sea, inspired by Jane Eyre and winner the Royal Society of Literature Award is beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range.'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 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.Set 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.'Compelling, painful and exquisite' Guardian'Brilliant. A tale of dislocation and dispossession, which Rhys writes with a kind of romantic cynicism, desperate and pungent' The Times'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' TimeJean 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 The Left Bank, was published in 1927. This 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 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 Tigers are Better-Looking. In 1966 she made a sensational reappearance with Wide Sargasso Sea, which won the Royal Society of Literature Award and the W. H. Smith Award. Her final 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.

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World''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 RobertsJean Rhys's masterpiece tells the story of Jane Eyre's 'madwoman in the attic', Bertha Rochester.Born 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.Edited with an introduction and notes by Angela Smith

'A wonderful bitter-sweet book, written with disarming simplicity' Esther Freud'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 demi-monde 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. Voyage in the Dark 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.

Wide Sargasso Sea, a masterpiece of modern fiction, was Jean Rhys’s return to the literary center stage. She had a startling early career and was known for her extraordinary prose and haunting women characters. With Wide Sargasso Sea, her last and best-selling novel, she ingeniously brings into light one of fiction’s most fascinating characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. This mesmerizing work introduces us to Antoinette Cosway, a sensual and protected young woman who is sold into marriage to the prideful Mr. Rochester. Rhys portrays Cosway amidst a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.A new introduction by the award-winning Edwidge Danticat, author most recently of Claire of the Sea Light, expresses the enduring importance of this work. Drawing on her own Caribbean background, she illuminates the setting’s impact on Rhys and her astonishing work.

A brilliant, yet brutal, portrait of a woman struggling to retrieve both life and love, from the author of Wide Sargasso SeaFor 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.

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.

Jean Rhys's first novel, a heartbreaking and disturbingly intimate portrayal of an isolated woman in ParisSet in a superficially romantic, between-wars Paris, Quartet 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.

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World''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 RobertsJean Rhys's masterpiece tells the story of Jane Eyre's 'madwoman in the attic', Bertha Rochester.Born 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.Edited with an introduction and notes by Angela Smith

A brilliant companion piece to Wide Sargasso Sea, this is Jean Rhys's beautifully written, bitter-sweet autobiography, covering her chequered early years in Dominica, England and Paris.Jean Rhys wrote this autobiography in her old age, now the celebrated author of Wide Sargasso Sea but 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.Includes an introduction by Diana Athill.

New to Penguin Classics, the remarkable, devastating collected stories by the author of Wide Sargasso Sea.Some 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, Wide Sargasso Sea. This volume includes all the stories from her three collections,The Left Bank (1927), Tigers Are Better-Looking (1968) and Sleep It Off, Lady (1976).

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'A gorgeous clothbound edition of Jean Rhys's great masterpiece of desire and madness in the Caribbean, published for the novel's fiftieth anniversary. Born 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.'She took one of the works of genius of the nineteenth century and turned it inside-out to create one of the works of genius of the twentieth century'Michele Roberts, The Times

Jean Rhys was one of the twentieth century's foremost writers, a literary artist who made exqusite use of the raw material of her own often turbulent life to create fiction of memorable resonance and poignancy. Here for the first time in one volume are her complete stories.

The last of the four novels Jean Rhys wrote in interwar Paris, Good Morning, Midnight is the culmination of a searing literary arc, which established Rhys as an astute observer of human tragedy. Her everywoman heroine, Sasha, must confront the loves— and losses— of her past in this mesmerizing and formally daring psychological portrait.

Julia Martin is in Paris and at the end of her rope. Once beautiful, she was taken care of by men. Now, after being dropped by her latest lover, Mr. Mackenzie, Julia is running out of luck and chances. A visit to London to see her ailing mother might offer an opportunity to start over—but it also brings her face to face with her distrustful sister, Norah, who can’t help but feel that Julia has only changed for the worse in the years since they last saw one another. And it proves difficult to escape the desultory romantic entanglements of Paris when a suitor follows her to England.Nowhere is Jean Rhys’s talent for fully inhabiting the minds of her characters more apparent than in After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, her masterful second novel. Rhys lays bare the desires and contradictions of the mercurial Julia, and all those trapped in her orbit, in this haunting depiction of life after the end of a tumultuous affair.

Often considered Jean Rhys’s most autobiographical novel, this masterful and moving work follows a chorus girl, Anna, who struggles to adjust to cold and inhospitable England after a childhood in the West Indies. When an affair that at first feels like salvation comes to a disastrous end, Anna begins to unravel.

Textual notes illuminate the novel’s historical background, regional references, and the non-translated Creole and French phrases necessary to fully understand this powerful story. Backgrounds includes a wealth of material on the novel’s long evolution, it connections to Jane Eyre, and Rhys’s biographical impressions of growing up in Dominica. Criticism introduces readers to the critical debates inspired by the novel with a Derek Walcott poem and eleven essays.