After Leaving Mr Mackenzie

It is a book that does not invite comparisons… . Its excellence is individual, intrinsic; it measures itself against itself * Saturday Review of Literature *She had an ability to see what others could not, or refused to see, and the guts to write about it – Christine Pountney * Guardian *

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.