Wide Sargasso Sea (Clothbound Classic)

Author: Jean Rhys

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $40.00 NZD
  • :
  • : 9780241281901
  • : Penguin UK
  • : Penguin
  • :
  • : 0.303907
  • : November 2016
  • : 198mm X 129mm
  • :
  • : 40.0
  • : November 2016
  • :
  • :
  • : books

Special Fields

  • :
  • :
  • : Jean Rhys
  • : Penguin Clothbound Classics Ser.
  • : Hardback
  • : 1
  • :
  • : English
  • : 823/.912
  • :
  • :
  • : 192
  • : FA
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
Barcode 9780241281901
9780241281901

Description

Wide Sargasso Sea, a masterpiece of modern fiction, was Jean Rhys's return to the literary center stage. She had a startling early career and was known for her extraordinary prose and haunting women characters. With Wide Sargasso Sea, her last and best-selling novel, she ingeniously brings into light one of fiction's most fascinating characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. This mesmerizing work introduces us to Antoinette Cosway, a sensual and protected young woman who is sold into marriage to the prideful Mr. Rochester. Rhys portrays Cosway amidst a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.


A new introduction by the award-winning Edwidge Danticat, author most recently of Claire of the Sea Light, expresses the enduring importance of this work. Drawing on her own Caribbean background, she illuminates the setting's impact on Rhys and her astonishing work.

Author description

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.