Wide Sargasso Sea

Description

Jean Rhys's unique prequel to Jane Eyre, a masterpiece of twentieth century literature Jean Rhys's late, literary masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea was inspired by Charlotte Bronte'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 was born in Dominica in 1894. After arriving in England aged sixteen, she became a chorus girl and drifted between different jobs before moving to Paris, where she started to write in the late 1920s. She published a story collection and four novels, after which she disappeared from view and lived reclusively for many years. In 1966 she made a sensational comeback with her masterpiece, Wide Sargasso Sea, written in difficult circumstances over a long period. Rhys died in 1979.

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 Rhys's iconic prequel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is rich in motifs and devices both modernist and postmodernist -- Hephzibah Anderson Beautiful and subversive [...] the novel didn't just take inspiration from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, it illuminated and confronted it, challenged the narrative. -- Danielle McLaughlin * Paris Review * Wide Sargasso Sea is not just a great novel, it is many brilliant books in one * Independent *