Postcards from Penguin Modern Classics - Jean Rhys, photograph: Pearl Freeman/ Jean Rhys Archive.

Jean Rhys was a talent before her time with an impressive ability to express the anguish of young, single 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. One of the most honest and distinctive British novelists of the 20th Century, Jean Rhys wrote about women with perception and sensitivity in an innovative and…

The long list of male alcoholic authors is well known, but what about their literary sisters? Olivia Laing looks back on the great female writers who sought refuge in the bottle and salvation on the page

jean rhys

On the 40th anniversary of the author’s death, Martin Chilton looks at her little-known collaboration with George Melly and The Feetwarmers

An international Journal of Rhys and Related Studies

I recall how, with a bolt of recognition, I first read the novels of Jean Rhys. Allow me, reader, to put this discovery in context. It was early in my writing career. I was a young woman, just begi…

Jean Rhys with Husband 1921