Jean Rhys CBE (/riːs/ REESS; born Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams; 24 August 1890 – 14 May 1979) was a novelist who was born and grew up in the Caribbean island of Dominica. From the age of 16, she resided mainly in England, where she was sent for her education. She is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), written as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. In 1978, she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for her writing.
Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 postmodern novel by Dominican-British author Jean Rhys. Set in Jamaica in the 1830s–1840s, the novel is a postcolonial and feminist prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847), detailing the background to Edward Rochester's marriage from the point of view of his wife Bertha Mason, Brontë's "madwoman in the attic", reimagined by Rhys as a Creole heiress named Antoinette Cosway.
Antoinette's story is told from the time of her youth in Jamaica, to her unhappy marriage to an English gentleman, Mr. Rochester, who renames her Bertha, declares her mad, takes her to England, and isolates her from the rest of the world in his mansion. Wide Sargasso Sea explores the power of relationships between men and women and discusses the themes of race, Caribbean history, and assimilation as Antoinette is caught in a white, patriarchal society in which she fully belongs neither to Europe nor to Jamaica.
The Rive Gauche (French pronunciation: [riv ɡoʃ]; Left Bank) is the southern bank of the river Seine in Paris. Here the river flows roughly westward, splitting the city into two parts. When facing downstream, the southern bank is to the left, whereas the northern bank (or Rive Droite) is to the right.
The Rive Gauche is associated with artists, writers, and philosophers including Colette, Margaret Anderson, Djuna Barnes, Natalie Barney, Sylvia Beach, Erik Satie, Kay Boyle, Bryher, Caresse Crosby, Nancy Cunard, H.D., Janet Flanner, Jane Heap, Maria Jolas, Mina Loy, Henry Miller, Adrienne Monnier, Anaïs Nin, Jean Rhys, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Renee Vivien, Edith Wharton Pablo Picasso, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Henri Matisse, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Baldwin, and dozens of members of the great artistic community at Montparnasse. The phrase implies a sense of bohemianism, counterculture, and creativity. Some of its famous streets are the Boulevard Saint-Germain, Boulevard Saint-Michel, the Rue de Vaugirard, and Rue Bonaparte.
The Transatlantic Review (often styled the transatlantic review) was an influential monthly literary magazine edited by Ford Madox Ford in 1924. The magazine was based in Paris but was published in London by Gerald Duckworth and Company.
Although it published only 12 issues—one in each month in 1924—the magazine had an influential impact on early 20th-century English literature by publishing works such as an early extract from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. The magazine also contained works by Djuna Barnes, Jean Cassou, H.D., Ernest Hemingway, Selma Lagerlöf, Jean Rhys, Gertrude Stein, and Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. The magazine was funded by John Quinn, who had been persuaded by Ezra Pound to give money to Ford for the publication of a literary magazine. Ernest Hemingway was the guest editor of the August 1924 edition.