Wide Sargasso Sea

London, UK: Penguin Books, Limited (UK), 1998. 1st Edition . Soft cover. New/None as Issued. Text/NEW & Bright. Softcover/NF w/a whisper of shelfwear.British novelist Jean Rhys (1890 - 1979), appointed 1978 a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for her writings, was born & raised in the Caribbean island of Dominica until the age of 16 before sent to England for schooling. This, her best known novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, was written in 1966, won the Royal Society of Literature Award, and the W.H. Smith Award; this is a 1998 reprint edition. Written as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Set in 1880s Jamaica, an account of a Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway who marries a young Englishman --- she spirited child which the British Empire's Slavery Abolition Act of 1834 plunged into poverty, and he who embraced rigid, Victorian values & expecting wives to behave accordingly. He will force Antoinette to conform, unaware that in denying her her identiy, pushes her into madness, and destroys a part of himself as well! 152 pgs in 3 parts. Part I, Antoinette's childhood; II, Alternating points of view of Antoinette and husband during their honeymoon; and III, Again from Antoinette perspective, now in England, renamed "Bertha", and, hidden & confined to the attic under guard. Brilliant novel of social dislocation & dispossession as world's social-philosophical values change.