I USED TO LIVE HERE ONCE: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys

This luminous biography reveals a proud and fiercely independent artist who experienced tragedy and extreme poverty, alcohol and drug dependency, romantic and sexual turmoil, and yet was never a victim. Jean Rhys is the acclaimed author of Wide Sargasso Sea and was an obsessive and troubled genius. Memories of a convicted Caribbean childhood haunt the four fictions that she wrote during her extraordinary years as an exile in 1920s Paris and later in England. Her experiences of heartbreak, poverty, notoriety, breakdowns and even imprisonment all became grist for her writing. Many details of her life emerged from her memoir, Smile Please, and the stories she wrote throughout her long and challenging career, but it is a shock to discover that no biographer until now has researched the crucial 17 years that Rhys spent living on the remote Caribbean island of Dominica, the island which haunted her mind and her work for the rest of her life. Chapters include Floggings, School and Sex (1896-1906), London in Wartime (1913-19), A Paris Marriage (1919-25), Hunger and Hope (1926-28), At War With the World (1940-45), Beckenham Blues (1946-50) and House By the Sea (1957-60). The final chapter is The Old Punk Upstairs (1977-79). Includes a map of Dominica c.1900, 425pp, many illus.