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Jean Rhys, CBE (; 24 August 1890 – 14 May 1979), born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams, was a mid-20th-century novelist who was born and grew up in the Caribbean island of Dominica, though she was mainly resident in England from the age of 16. She is best known for her novel ''Wide Sargasso Sea'' (1966), written as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's ''Jane Eyre''. ==Early life== Rhys was born in Roseau, the capital of Dominica, an island in the British West Indies. Her father, William Rees Williams, was a Welsh doctor and her mother, Minna Williams, was a third-generation Dominican Creole of Scots ancestry. ("Creole" was broadly used in those times to refer to people born on the island, whether they were of white or mixed blood.) Rhys was educated in Dominica until the age of 16, when she was sent to England to live with an aunt. She attended the Perse School for Girls in Cambridge,〔 where she was mocked as an outsider and for her accent. She attended two terms at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London by 1909. Her instructors despaired of her ever learning to speak "proper English" and advised her father to take her away. Now unable to train as an actress and refusing to return to the Caribbean as her parents wished, she worked with varied success as a chorus girl, adopting the names Vivienne, Emma or Ella Gray.〔Carr, Helen (2004). "Williams, Ella Gwendoline Rees (1890–1979)," ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,'' Oxford University Press.〕 After her father died, in 1910, Rhys appeared to have experimented with the prospect of living as a demimondaine. She became the mistress of a wealthy stockbroker, Lancelot Grey Hugh ("Lancey") Smith. Though he was a bachelor, Smith did not offer to marry Rhys and their affair soon ended. However, he continued to be an occasional source of financial help. Distraught by events, including a near-fatal abortion (not Smith's child), Rhys began writing and produced an early version of her novel ''Voyage In The Dark''.〔 In 1913 she worked for a time as a nude model in Britain. During the First World War Rhys served as a volunteer worker in a soldiers' canteen. In 1918 she worked in a pension office. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Jean Rhys」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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