I Used To Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys (In person)
Acclaimed biographer Miranda Seymour speaks with Lauren Elkin about the wild and complex life of novelist Jean Rhys.
An obsessive and troubled genius, Jean Rhys was one of the most compelling and unnerving writers of the twentieth century. After a huge early success, she vanished from view for a quarter of a century, reappearing in the midst of the sex, drugs and rock n’ roll ‘cool’ of 1970s London. Memories of a conflicted and violent Caribbean childhood still haunted her and they pervade the four fictions that Rhys wrote during her extraordinary years as an exile in 1920s Paris and later in England, most famously in her Jane Eyre-inspired masterpiece, Wide Sargasso Sea. Yet, no biographer has researched the crucial first seventeen years of Rhys’ life spent living on the remote island of Dominica – until now.
Luminous and penetrating, Miranda Seymour’s new biography reveals a proud and fiercely independent artist, one who experienced tragedy and extreme poverty, alcohol and drug dependency, romantic and sexual turmoil – and yet was never a victim. I Used to Live Here Once sees one of our most excitingly intuitive biographers uncover the hidden truth about a fascinatingly elusive woman, whose life and work was profoundly impacted by colonialism. The figure who emerges is cultured, self-mocking, self-absorbed, unpredictable and often darkly funny. In conversation with writer Lauren Elkin, Seymour brings this cult figure to life as never before.
Miranda Seymour is a biographer, novelist, memoirist and critic. She is the author of the award-winning memoir, In My Father’s House and her many acclaimed biographies include: A Ring of Conspirators, an innovative study of Henry James and his literary circle; Ottoline Morrell: Life on a Grand Scale; Robert Graves: Life on the Edge; Mary Shelley: In Byron’s Wake and The Bugatti Queen. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Lauren Elkin is a writer and translator. Her books include Flâneuse: Women Walk the City and, most recently, No. 91/92: a diary of a year on the bus. She is the UK translator of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel The Inseparables and her essays on art, literature and culture have appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Times, Granta and Frieze, among others.
Miranda Seymour’s book, I Used To Live Here Once, and Lauren Elkin's No. 91/92: Notes on a Parisian Commute and Flaneuse are available to order through our partner bookshop, Hatchards.
N.B. This event will take place in person at The London Library in alignment with up-to-date government COVID recommendations. Please see our Event Access and COVID Guidelines before you arrive. Doors (and the bar) open at 7.00pm for a 7.30pm start.
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