Jean Rhys wrote about Jean Rhys. She wrote a number of novels and short stories focusing on her own geographical and emotional alienation, as well as an unfinished autobiography. Her fiction from between the two world ward was largely forgotten when her final novel,
Wide Sargasso Sea, brought her major success. After this her novels and short-story collections were translated into many languages, including French, Dutch, Belgian, Swedish, German, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Hungarian, Italian,Yugoslavian, Japanese, Czech, Spanish, and Turkish. Her autobiography was translated into French. Several of her novels and stories have been adapted for radio, film and television.
Milestones
January 1914 After feeling suicidal at Christmas, Ella Williams (later JR) drafted a diary/novel in three and a half black exercise books; it was revised and published two decades later as
Voyage in the Dark.
1 June 1957 JR signed a publishing contract with
Deutsch for her fifth and final novel,
Wide Sargasso Sea; she did not complete the book for nine torturous years.
8 December 1971 The BBC Symphony Orchestra performed a musical monodrama for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, with text from JR's novel
Wide Sargasso Sea.
14 May 1979 JR died peacefully in hospital in
Dorset.
15 November 1979 JR's
Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography appeared posthumously: she completed the section on her childhood in
Dominica, but not that on her adult life in
England and
France.
