Jean Rhys is a significant writer who lived a difficult life full of personal tragedies, setbacks, and self-doubts: three marriages, the loss of her first child and the absence of her second one for long periods, financial strain, and psychological conflict. Out of this, in two very productive phases, came her writing, but these creative years were separated by a long period of obscurity during which she virtually disappeared from the literary scene. She came to international prominence through the publication of Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) when she was in her seventies. Rhys's writing and her life story are closely intertwined. She said that she thought the only truth she knew was herself, and certainly most of what she wrote can be easily related to known experiences of hers. But she was separate from her work as well. The facts of her life are often confusingly vague (she herself...