I Used to Live Here Once

April 25, 2022
Critic Seymour (A Ring of Conspirators) delivers a fastidious biography of British author Jean Rhys (1890–1979), who lived an “extraordinary and often reckless life, one that took her from poverty... to eventual recognition as perhaps the finest English woman novelist of the twentieth century.” Rhys authored complex and oft-controversial female protagonists, Seymour notes: her 1931 novel After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, for example, featured a “morally dubious heroine” and was considered a “waste of talent” by critics. Seymour makes a convincing case that criticism of Rhys’s work was “focused upon the connection between the author herself and the... more victimised women about whom she wrote,” and is comprehensive in her coverage of Rhys’s struggles with mental illness and addiction: “She had begun drinking so heavily during 1934 that she couldn’t write. And without her writing, she went to pieces.” Photographs and letters enrich the text, and Seymour’s perspective leaves plenty of room for curiosity: “Questions abound. How much of the material on which Rhys seems to draw... was based on historical fact?” This captivating study is well worth a look for fans and scholars.