SOURCE: An interview in The Paris Review, No. 76, 1979, pp. 219-37.

In the following interview, which was conducted shortly before her death, Rhys discusses her life and writing career.

[Rhys]: We moved here [to Devon] because I wanted a place of my own. We bought it—my late husband and I—sight unseen because anything was better than rooms. That's all we'd been in. A room is, after all, a place where you hide from the wolves. That's all any room is. It was difficult here at first. The gales came through the crevices. The mice were everywhere. A frog in the bathroom. Then when I first came here, I was accused of being a witch. A neighbor told the whole village that I practised black magic. I got very cross, but gradually it all died down.

[Vreeland]: What a shock it must have been when you first arrived...