Born in 1890 in Roseau, Dominica, the West Indies, Jean Rhys was of mixed parentage. Her father, Dr. William Rhys, was a Welshman, and her mother, Minna Williams, was a Creole. In 1907, Rhys left Dominica to attend the Perse School in Cambridge, England, but spent only one term there; the following year, she entered the Academy of Dramatic Art to study acting, but left to join a chorus line. In 1919, after a sporadic theatrical career and several failed relationships, Rhys left England to marry Jean Lenglet, a French-Dutch songwriter and journalist; the pair lived on the European Continent. In 1923, however, Lenglet was arrested on a charge of illegal entry into France and extradited to Holland. Rhys returned to England alone, where she began a career as a writer, publishing her first book, The Left Bank and Other Stories (1927). More works followed: the semi-autobiographical Postures (called Quartet in the United States; 1928); After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (1930); Voyage in the Dark (1934); and Good Morning, Midnight (1939). Divorced from Lenglet in 1932, Rhys married two more times: first to Leslie Tilden Smith, a publisher’s reader, who died in 1945, then to Max Hamer, a retired naval officer, who died in 1964.
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