Editing Jean Rhys (section)

==Writing career==
In 1924, Rhys came under the influence of Ford Madox Ford. After meeting Ford in Paris, Rhys wrote short stories under his patronage. Ford recognised that her experience as an exile gave Rhys a unique viewpoint, and praised her "singular instinct for form". "Coming from the West Indies, [Ford] declared, 'with a terrifying insight and... passion for stating the case of the underdog, she has let her pen loose on the Left Banks of the Old World'."<ref name="carr"/> This he wrote in his preface to her debut short story collection, ''[[The Left Bank and Other Stories]]'' (1927).

It was Ford who suggested she change her name from Ella Williams to Jean Rhys.<ref name="Owen, Katie 2000">Owen, Katie, "Introduction", ''Quartet'', Penguin Modern Classics edition, Penguin, 2000, p. vi. {{ISBN|978-0-14-118392-3}}</ref> At the time her husband was in jail for what Rhys described as currency irregularities. Rhys moved in with Ford and his long-time partner [[Stella Bowen]]. An affair with Ford ensued, which she portrayed in fictionalised form in her novel ''[[Quartet (Jean Rhys novel)|Quartet]]'' (1928).<ref name="Owen, Katie 2000"/> Her protagonist is a stranded foreigner, Marya Zelli, who finds herself at the mercy of strangers when her husband is jailed in Paris. The 1981 [[Quartet (1981 film)|film adaptation]] of the novel was produced by [[Merchant Ivory Productions]].

In ''[[After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie]]'' (1931), the protagonist, Julia Martin, is a more unravelled version of Marya Zelli, romantically dumped and inhabiting the pavements, cafes and cheap hotel rooms of Paris.

With ''[[Voyage in the Dark]]'' (1934), Rhys continued to portray a mistreated, rootless woman. Here the narrator, Anna, is a young chorus girl who grew up in the West Indies and feels alienated in England.

''[[Good Morning, Midnight (Rhys novel)|Good Morning, Midnight]]'' (1939) is considered a continuation of Rhys's first two novels. Here, she uses modified [[Stream of consciousness (narrative mode)|stream of consciousness]] to voice the experiences of an ageing woman, Sasha Jansen, who drinks, takes [[Hypnotic|sleeping pill]]s, and obsesses over her looks, and is adrift again in Paris. ''Good Morning, Midnight'', acknowledged as well written but deemed depressing, came as [[World War II]] broke out and readers sought optimism. This seemingly ended Rhys's literary career.

In the 1940s, Rhys largely withdrew from public life. From 1955 to 1960, she lived in [[Bude]], Cornwall, where she was unhappy, calling it "Bude the Obscure", before moving to [[Cheriton Fitzpaine]], a small village in Devon.

After a long absence from the public eye, she was rediscovered in Beckenham, South London, by [[Selma Vaz Dias]], who in 1949 placed an advertisement in the ''[[New Statesman]]'' asking about her whereabouts, with a view to obtaining the rights to adapt her novel ''[[Good Morning, Midnight (Rhys novel)|Good Morning, Midnight]]'' for radio. Rhys responded, and thereafter developed a long-lasting and collaborative friendship with Vaz Dias, who encouraged her to start writing again. This encouragement ultimately led to the publication in 1966 of her critically acclaimed novel ''[[Wide Sargasso Sea]]''. She intended it as an account of the woman whom Rochester married and kept in his attic in ''[[Jane Eyre]]''. Begun well before she settled in Bude, the book won the notable [[WH Smith Literary Award]] in 1967. She returned to themes of dominance and dependence, especially in marriage, depicting the mutually painful relationship between a privileged English man and a [[Creole peoples|Creole]] woman from Jamaica made powerless on being duped and coerced by him and others. Both the man and the woman enter marriage under mistaken assumptions about the other partner. Her female lead marries Mr. Rochester and deteriorates in England as the "madwoman in the attic". Rhys portrays this woman from a quite different perspective from the one in ''Jane Eyre''. [[Diana Athill]] of [[André Deutsch]] gambled on publishing ''Wide Sargasso Sea''. She and the writer [[Francis Wyndham (Writer)|Francis Wyndham]] helped to revive interest in Rhys's work.<ref name=Penguin>Preliminary page in Jean Rhys, ''Quartet'', Penguin: 2000, {{ISBN|978-0-14-118392-3}}.</ref> There have been film, operatic and radio adaptations of the book.<ref>Brian Kellow,[https://www.operanews.com/Opera_News_Magazine/2012/12/Departments/On_the_Beat.html "On the Beat: A novel that sings: Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea"], ''Opera News'', December 2012 — Vol. 77, No. 6.</ref><ref>[http://www.radiolistings.co.uk/programmes/j/je/jean_rhys___wide_sargasso_sea.html "Jean Rhys – Wide Sargasso Sea"], ''RadioListings''.</ref><ref>[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00m0stc "Jean Rhys – Wide Sargasso Sea"], BBC Radio 4 Extra.</ref><ref>[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b072zkst "Wide Sargasso Sea"], Drama, BBC Radio 4.</ref>

In 1968, [[André Deutsch]] published a collection of Rhys' short stories, ''[[Tigers Are Better-Looking]]'', of which eight were written during her 1950s period of obscurity and nine republished from her 1927 collection ''[[The Left Bank and Other Stories]]''. Her 1969 short story "I Spy a Stranger", published by [[Penguin Books|Penguin Modern Stories]], was adapted for TV in 1972 for the [[BBC]]'s ''[[Thirty-Minute Theatre]]'' starring [[Mona Washbourne]], [[Noel Dyson]], [[Hana Maria Pravda|Hanah Maria Pravda]], and [[Basil Dignam]].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Rhys |first1=Jean |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/251855018 |title=Letters, 1931-1966 Jean Rhys ; Selected and ed. by Francis Wyndham and Diana Melly |last2=Melly|first2=Diana |last3=Wyndham |first3=Francis |date=1984 |publisher=Deutsch |isbn=978-0-233-97567-2 |oclc=251855018}}</ref><ref>{{Citation |title=Thirty-Minute Theatre {{!}} I Spy a Stranger (TV Episode 1972) – IMDb |url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0721085/fullcredits |access-date=1 May 2020}}</ref> In 1976, Deutsch published another collection of her short stories, ''[[Sleep It Off Lady]]'', consisting of 16 pieces from an approximately 75-year period, starting from the end of the 19th century.