Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys (1890-1979), originally Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, was a novelist, the daughter of a Welsh father and a Creole mother. Her first four novels were published during her twenties and thirties, but it was not until the publication of Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966 that she enjoyed real fame. The book is a "prequel" to Charlotte Brontë's novel, Jane Eyre.

Her works of fiction are often criticised as variations on a singular theme- that of the lives of women transplanted from their roots and left to die at the whims of unfamiliar societies. The works seem autobiographical, and because of this are often not considered important as a whole body of work.

Rhys herself was transplanted from the Caribbean to London at a young age. She worked unsuccessfully as a chorus girl and soon was falling through the cracks of London society.