WHAT A LONG, STRANGE TRIP IT WAS
Born in 1890, Jean Rhys (christened Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams) lived through two world wars and in her long life observed firsthand the many changes wrought by the 20th century. She consorted with the literati of the Lost Generation in 1920s Paris, including Ford Madox Ford, and again with those of the late 20th century, including American novelist David Plante. Consorting with Ford may have got her pregnant, but Rhys was so protective of her private life that even Miranda Seymour, in this exhaustively researched biography, cannot say for certain.
Rhys spent her childhood in Dominica, a flyspeck island in the eastern Caribbean between Martinique and Guadeloupe that was a British colony at the time of her birth. English was and remains the island’s official language, but a French-based Kweyol, in which Rhys had some fluency, is spoken by the Black inhabitants, some of whom also practice Obeah, one of several African-based religions in the Caribbean.
The child of
