New Releases by Jean Rhys

So there''s a good time coming for the ladies, is there?-a good time coming for the girls? About time too'' Stories of women adrift in seedy bars and down-at-heel hotels, from a master of the short story form.

Jean Rhys, l''une des plus grandes romancières de son temps, est morte le 14 mai 1979, à près de quatre-vingt-dix ans. Elle travaillait depuis environ quatre ans à cet ouvrage autobiographique qui n''avançait qu''avec une extrême lenteur à cause de sa fragilité physique. Elle parvint à mener les quinze brefs chapitres décrivant son enfance au point où la perfectionniste qu''elle était pût les considérer comme achevés. Ils racontent son histoire jusqu''au moment où elle quitta l''île de la Dominique, aux Antilles, où elle était née, pour aller poursuivre ses études en Angleterre. Pendant la dernière année de sa vie, elle songeait quelquefois à la possibilité de publier ces chapitres indépendamment ; mais elle concluait toujours en espérant avoir le temps de réviser et de polir le reste de son travail, qu''elle avait déjà dicté dans une première version. Ce délai ne lui fut pas accordé. L''autobiographie inachevée fut publiée à titre posthume en incluant les passages non révisés dans leur état brut. Décision en grande partie motivée par le fait que, dans les chapitres non révisés, Jean Rhys raconte comment elle a commencé à écrire, ce qui est du plus haut intérêt pour tous ceux qui aiment et admirent son oeuvre, et ne peut être puisé à aucune autre source. Diana Athill, qui fut la conseillère littéraire de Jean Rhys et son amie, donne dans sa préface, écrite pour la première édition de l''autobiographie en 1979 et reprise ici, des détails supplémentaires sur la façon dont ce livre est né et présente une brève chronologie des principaux événements qui ont marqué la vie de Jean Rhys.

One of the BBC''s ''100 Novels that Shaped the World'' Jean Rhys''s spell-binding novel Wide Sargasso Sea, inspired by Jane Eyre and winner the Royal Society of Literature Award is beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range. ''There is no looking glass here and I don''t know what I am like now... Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in this place and who am I?'' If Antoinette Cosway, a spirited Creole heiress, could have foreseen the terrible future that awaited her, she would not have married the young Englishman. Initially drawn to her beauty and sensuality, he becomes increasingly frustrated by his inability to reach into her soul. He forces Antoinette to conform to his rigid Victorian ideals, unaware that in taking away her identity he is destroying a part of himself as well as pushing her towards madness. Set against the lush backdrop of 1830s Jamaica, Jean Rhys''s powerful, haunting masterpiece was inspired by her fascination with the first Mrs Rochester, the mad wife in Charlotte Brontë''s Jane Eyre. ''Compelling, painful and exquisite'' Guardian ''Brilliant. A tale of dislocation and dispossession, which Rhys writes with a kind of romantic cynicism, desperate and pungent'' The Times ''Rhys turns a menacing cipher into a grieving, plausible young woman, and one whose story says whole worlds about global mixtures, about the misunderstandings between the colonized, the colonizers and the people who can''t easily say which they are'' Time Jean Rhys was born in Dominica in 1890, the daughter of a Welsh doctor and a white Creole mother, and came to England when she was sixteen. Her first book, a collection of stories called The Left Bank, was published in 1927. This was followed by Quartet (originally Postures, 1928), After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1930), Voyage in the Dark (1934) and Good Morning, Midnight (1939). None of these books was particularly successful and with the outbreak of war they went out of print. Jean Rhys dropped from sight until nearly twenty years later she was discovered living reclusively in Cornwall. During those years she had accumulated the stories collected in Tigers are Better-Looking. In 1966 she made a sensational reappearance with Wide Sargasso Sea, which won the Royal Society of Literature Award and the W. H. Smith Award. Her final collection of stories, Sleep It Off Lady, appeared in 1976 and Smile Please, her unfinished autobiography, was published posthumously in 1979. Jean Rhys died in 1979.

Sargassohavet utspelar sig i det tidiga 1800-talets Västindien, mitt i den förrädiska naturens överdådiga grönska. Antoinette Cosway gifter sig med den unge engelsmannen Edward Rochester. Men illasinnade rykten börjar cirkulera u001a och får honom att vända sig mot henne. Sakta men säkert drivs Antoinette mot vansinne. Sargassohavet bygger på Charlotte Brontës roman Jane Eyre. Den är en omskrivning av den viktorianska berättelsen men samtidigt ett enastående verk i sig självt, som med tiden blivit en postkolonial klassiker. JEAN RHYS [1890u001a1979] hade länge antagits död när hon plötsligt åter dök upp på den litterära scenen med Sargassohavet 1966. I den engelskspråkiga världen mottogs romanen som en sensation. »Rhys öppnar en hemlig dörr i Brontës viktorianska roman u001a en dörr till koloniernas historia, minst lika undertryckt som en förbjuden kvinnlig vrede. Sargassohavet är ett oroande mästerverk.« EVA STRÖM, SYDSVENSKAN »Tveklöst ett mästerverk.« MAGNUS ERIKSSON, SVENSKA DAGBLADET »Det är som om Charlotte Brontës roman Jane Eyre vore del två i en romansvit och nu har man äntligen hittat del ett, för att strax upptäcka att den är ännu bättre.« CATRIN VILLAUME FÄGERSTRAND, NORRKÖPINGS TIDNINGAR »En av 1900-talets 100 bästa engelskspråkiga romaner.« TIME MAGAZINE

Tras largos años de silencio y olvido después de haber publicado, en el período que va de 1927 a 1939, cinco libros escritos «con una sensibilidad demasiado adelantada a su época», Jean Rhys reapareció en 1966 en la escena literaria inglesa con "Ancho mar de los Sargazos", que muchos críticos consideran su obra maestra

Un breve texto autobiográfico que es una magnífica carta de presentación de la autora.

Jamaikan gaude. Mila zortziehun eta berrogeita gutxigarren urtea da. Etxalde-jabe baten alaba gaztea mutil ingeles etorri berri batekin ezkontzen da, familiaren ondasunak gal ez daitezen. Dena biribila: sortu da maitasuna, eta badator zoriona. Baina neskak sekretu bat dauka, bere haurtzaroaz eta amaz. Poliki-poliki, sekretu hori ezkontideen arteko harreman perfektua higatzen hasten da, eta, agian, berriz hasiko da neskaren amaren istorioa... alabarengan.

Antoinette Cosway is a Creole heiress living in Jamaica, who meets and marries a young Englishman, Mr Rochester. Taken from the vibrant, sensual Caribbean landscape to England, Antoinette finds herself the centre of disturbing rumours which gradually posion her husband''s mind against her.

One of the BBC''s ''100 Novels That Shaped Our World'' ''Rhys took one of the works of genius of the 19th Century and turned it inside-out to create one of the works of genius of the 20th Century'' Michele Roberts Jean Rhys''s masterpiece tells the story of Jane Eyre''s ''madwoman in the attic'', Bertha Rochester. Born into the oppressive, colonialist society of 1930s Jamaica, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality. After their marriage, however, disturbing rumours begin to circulate which poison her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is inexorably driven towards madness, and her husband into the arms of another novel''s heroine. This classic study of betrayal, a seminal work of postcolonial literature, is Jean Rhys''s brief, beautiful masterpiece. Edited with an introduction and notes by Angela Smith

Jean Rhys''s Good Morning Midnight is an unforgettable portrait of a woman bravely confronting loneliness and despair in her quest for self-determination In 1930s Paris, where one cheap hotel room is very like another, a young woman is teaching herself indifference. She has escaped personal tragedy and has come to France to find courage and seek independence. She tells herself to expect nothing, especially not kindness, least of all from men. Tomorrow, she resolves, she will dye her hair blonde. Jean Rhys was a talent before her time with an impressive ability to express the anguish of young women. In Good Morning, Midnight Rhys created the powerfully modern portrait of Sophia Jansen, whose emancipation is far more painful and complicated than she could expect, but whose confession is flecked with triumph and elation. With an introduction by A.L. Kennedy ''Her eloquence in the language of human sexual transactions is chilling, cynical, and surprisingly moving'' A.L. Kennedy

''A wonderful bitter-sweet book, written with disarming simplicity'' Esther Freud ''It was as if a curtain had fallen, hiding everything I had ever known,'' says Anna Morgan, eighteen years old and catapulted to England from the West Indies after the death of her beloved father. Working as a chorus girl, Anna drifts into the demi-monde of Edwardian London. But there, dismayed by the unfamiliar cold and greyness, she is absolutely alone and unconsciously floating from innocence to harsh experience. Her childish dreams have been replaced by harsh reality. Voyage in the Dark was first published in 1934, but it could have been written today. It is the story of an unhappy love affair, a portrait of a hypocritical society, and an exploration of exile and breakdown; all written in Jean Rhys''s hauntingly simple and beautiful style.

Julia Martin is at the end of her rope in Paris. Once beautiful, she was taken care of by men. Now after leaving her lover, she is running out of luck. A visit to London to see her ailing mother and distrustful sister bring her stark life into full focus.

Julia Martin is in Paris and at the end of her rope. Once beautiful, she was taken care of by men. Now after being dropped by her latest lover, she visits London to see her ailing mother and meets up with her distrustful sister, Norah. This is a haunting picture of two desperate women in a desperate predicament.