Smile Please

Candid and atmospheric, Smile Please shows a woman living adrift from the world, and a writer who was sensitive, perceptive and ahead of her time.

'This time I must not blot a line. No revision, no second thoughts. Down it shall go. Already I am terrified'

Jean Rhys, the celebrated author of Wide Sargasso Sea, laid much of her troubled life bare in her novels, yet remained haunted by memories of her past. In this extraordinary autobiography, written in old age and despite the burden of late fame, she recaptures it: from her early days on the lush, wild island of Dominica to her bleak years in England, moving through different bedsits, jobs and men, and on to life in Paris, where she found a certain freedom and began to write in earnest. Candid and atmospheric, Smile Please shows a woman living adrift from the world, and a writer who was sensitive, perceptive and ahead of her time.

About the Author

Jean Rhys was born in Dominica in 1894. After arriving in England aged sixteen, she became a chorus girl and drifted between different jobs before moving to Paris, where she started to write in the late 1920s. She published a story collection and four novels, after which she disappeared from view and lived reclusively for many years. In 1966 she made a sensational comeback with her masterpiece, Wide Sargasso Sea, written in difficult circumstances over a long period. Rhys died in 1979.