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  • Published: 30 May 2019
  • ISBN: 9780141185422
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $22.99

Wide Sargasso Sea




Jean Rhys's unique prequel to Jane Eyre, a masterpiece of twentieth century literature

Jean Rhys's late, literary masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea was inspired by Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and is set in the lush, beguiling landscape of Jamaica in the 1830s. Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent sensuality and beauty. After their marriage the rumours begin, poisoning her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is driven towards madness.

  • Published: 30 May 2019
  • ISBN: 9780141185422
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $22.99

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Praise for Wide Sargasso Sea

Rhys took one of the works of genius of the 19th Century and turned it inside-out to create one of the works of genius of the 20th Century

Michele Roberts

Rhys's iconic prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is rich in motifs and devices both modernist and postmodernist

Hephzibah Anderson

Beautiful and subversive [...] the novel didn't just take inspiration from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, it illuminated and confronted it, challenged the narrative.

Danielle McLaughlin, Paris Review

Wide Sargasso Sea is not just a great novel, it is many brilliant books in one

Independent