Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys was a British Creole novelist who grew up on the Caribbean island of Dominica before moving to England at sixteen. She is best known for Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre that gives Bertha Rochester her own story. Her earlier books, such as Quartet (1928) and Good Morning, Midnight (1939), follow women struggling in London and Paris. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1978 and died the following year.