I used to live here once : the haunted life of Jean Rhys / Miranda Seymour.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Seymour, Miranda, author.

Contributor:

Rosengarten Family Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women novelists, English--20th century--Biography.

Women novelists, English.

English literature--20th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

Caribbean literature (English)--History and criticism.

Caribbean literature (English).

Dominica literature--History and criticism.

Dominica literature.

Novelists, English.

Rhys, Jean.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xvii, 421 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Edition:

First American edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : W.W. Norton & Company, 2022.

Summary:

"Jean Rhys is one of the most compelling writers of the twentieth century. Memories of her Caribbean girlhood haunt the four short and piercingly brilliant novels that Rhys wrote during her extraordinary years as an exile in 1920s Paris and later in England, a body of fiction-above all, the extraordinary Wide Sargasso Sea-that has a passionate following today. And yet her own colorful life, including her early years on the Caribbean island of Dominica, remains too little explored, until now. In I Used to Live Here Once, Miranda Seymour sheds new light on the artist whose proud and fiercely solitary life profoundly informed her writing. Rhys experienced tragedy and extreme poverty, alcohol and drug dependency, romantic and sexual turmoil, all of which contributed to the "Rhys woman" of her oeuvre. Today, readers still intuitively relate to her unforgettable characters, vulnerable, watchful, and often alarmingly disaster-prone outsiders; women with a different way of moving through the world. And yet, while her works often contain autobiographical material, Rhys herself was never a victim. The figure who emerges for Seymour is cultured, self-mocking, unpredictable-and shockingly contemporary. Based on new research in the Caribbean, a wealth of never-before-seen papers, journals, letters, and photographs, and interviews with those who knew Rhys, I Used to Live Here Once is a luminous and penetrating portrait of a fascinatingly elusive artist"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: I. A WORLD APART: Gwen

1. Wellspring (1890

1907)

2. Floggings, School and Sex (1896

1906)

II. ENGLAND: A COLD COUNTRY: Ella

3. Stage-struck (1907

13)

4. Fact and Fiction: A London Life (1911

5. London in Wartime (1913

19)

III. A EUROPEAN LIFE: Madame Jean Lenglet

6. A Paris Marriage (1919

25)

7. "L'affaire Ford" (1924

26)

8. Hunger, and Hope (1926

28)

IV. THE RHYS WOMAN: Jean Rhys

9. Two Tunes: Past and Present (1929

36)

10. A la recherche, or Temps Perdi (1936)

11. Good Morning, Midnight (1936

39)

V. DARKNESS AT NOON: Mrs. Max Hamer

12. At War with the World (1940

45)

13. Beckenham Blues (1946

50)

14. The Lady Vanishes (1950

56)

VI. THE PHOENIX RISES: Jean Rhys

15. A House by the Sea (1957

60)

16. Cheriton Fitzpaine

17. The Madness of Perfection (1960

63)

18. An End and a Beginning (1964

66)

VII. UNWELCOME FAME

19. No Orchids for Miss Rhys (1966

69)

20. Rhys in Retreat (1967

74)

21. "Mrs Methuselah" (1973

76)

VIII. AND YET I FEAR

22. "The Old Punk Upstairs" (1977

79).

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Rosengarten Family Fund.

ISBN:

9781324006121

1324006129

OCLC:

1272856404

Publisher Number:

99991070187