SOURCE: "Jean Rhys," in Partisan Review, Vol. XLIX, No. 1, 1982, pp. 92-100.

In the following essay, Bamber provides an overview of Rhys's fiction, literary career, and critical reception.

Jean Rhys, who died in 1978 at age eighty-four, lived long enough to ride the wheel of literary fashion full circle. Taken up by Ford Madox Ford in the twenties, she was completely forgotten two decades later. In 1958 a British radio producer advertised for news of her whereabouts; Rhys herself answered the ad from Devon and subsequently resumed her literary career. Since the publication of Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966, there has been a steady growth of interest in her stories and novels. One by one all her books of the twenties and thirties have been reissued and enthusiastically reviewed; the final accolade came several years ago when A. Alvarez, writing in the New York Times, called her "the best living English novelist...