Editing Jean Rhys (section)

==Marriage and family==
In 1919, Rhys married [[:nl:Jean Lenglet|Willem Johan Marie (Jean) Lenglet]], a French-Dutch journalist, spy, and songwriter. He was the first of her three husbands.<ref name="carr"/> She and Lenglet lived in Paris, where their baby son died, then lived in Vienna and Budapest before returning to Paris. Their daughter was born in 1922. In 1924, the year that the newly named Jean Rhys was discovered and published by the English writer [[Ford Madox Ford]], Lenglet was imprisoned for embezzlement. The couple eventually divorced in 1933, but remained loyal to each others' work, while sharing the care of their daughter, Maryvonne.{{cn|date=August 2024}}

The next year, Rhys married Leslie Tilden-Smith, an English agent and editor.{{cn|date=August 2024}} In 1936, they went briefly to Dominica, the first time Rhys had returned since she had left for school. Her brother Owen was living in England, and she took care of some financial affairs for him, making a settlement with a [[mixed-race]] woman on the island and Owen's illegitimate children by her.{{cn|date=March 2024}}The visit exerted a powerful influence on Rhys's most famous novel, Wide Sargasso Sea.

In 1937, Rhys began a friendship with novelist [[Eliot Bliss]] (who had adopted that first name in honour of an admired writer). The two women shared Caribbean backgrounds. The correspondence between them survives.<ref>McFarlin Library [http://orgs.utulsa.edu/spcol/?p=2073 Retrieved 17 September 2015.] {{Webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171027074557/http://orgs.utulsa.edu/spcol/?p=2073 |date=27 October 2017}} Bliss is quoted on their relations in [[Alexandra Pringle]]'s introduction to the 1984 reissue of Bliss's novel ''Luminous Isle'': "She used to make me delightful [[West Indies|West-Indian]] suppers, and we used to drink an awful lot. Well, she could hold it, but it used to make me ill, frequently ill. And she had a delightful husband who used to leave us, go out. Well, often he would come home and find us drunk. He once picked her off the floor. And he was furious if he found we'd drunk his wine."</ref> Rhys also became close to Phyllis Shand Allfree, whose family also lived in Dominica.{{cn|date=August 2024}}

Rhys and Tilden-Smith lived in London through World War II, while Rhys agonised over the possible fate of her daughter, living in Amsterdam. (Maryvonne had joined the Dutch Resistance and married a fellow fighter against Fascism) Tilden-Smith died in 1945. In 1947, Rhys married Max Hamer, a [[solicitor]] who was a cousin of Tilden-Smith. He was convicted of fraud and imprisoned after their marriage. Rhys remained admirably loyal to him throughout, while their lives descended into conditions of extreme poverty, including even the hold of a boat and a horsebox. They settled in 1960, in a cottage in Cheriton Fitzpaine, purchased for Rhys by her oldest brother, Edward. Max Hamer died in 1966, the year in which Wide Sargasso Sea began a remarkable change in Rhys' fortunes.<ref>[http://readingdetectives.org/kent/2009/10/from-maidstone-prison-to-the-wide-sargasso-sea.html "Kent: From Maidstone Prison to the Wide Sargasso Sea!"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131203002910/http://readingdetectives.org/kent/2009/10/from-maidstone-prison-to-the-wide-sargasso-sea.html |date= 3 December 2013}}</ref>