Miranda Seymour discusses her new biography of Jean Rhys (the author of ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’), with readings by Diana Quick.
After a huge early success, Jean Rhys (author of Wide Sargasso Sea) vanished from view for quarter of a century. She was rediscovered in the 70s becoming world famous in her eighties and taken to the heart of ‘cool’ London with drugs, sex and rock and roll going on all around her. She died in 1979 but has again become a cult figure as the strongly themed subjects of her novels speak to our times.
Miranda Seymour’s new biography, I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys (2022), is the first to research the crucial seventeen years that Rhys spent living on the remote Caribbean island of Dominica; the island which haunted Rhys’s mind and her work for the rest of her life.
This Weinrebe Lecture will feature readings by noted actress Diana Quick from I Used to Live Here Once as well as from Jean Rhys’s work.
Miranda Seymour is a biographer, novelist, memoir writer and critic, has been a visiting professor at Nottingham Trent University. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Diana Quick’s recent TV work includes ‘Father Brown’, ‘The Missing’, ‘The Living And The Dead’ and ‘Houdini And Doyle’, and on film ‘The Death Of Stalin’ and ‘Forever Now’ due for release next year. She has been a member of the National Theatre and the RSC, and appeared in a number of West End plays and musicals. She has appeared in the premiers of many new theatre works, and is a frequent broadcaster. Virago publishes her memoir, ‘A Tug On The Thread’ and her contribution to ‘50 Shades of Feminism’, and her translation of De Beauvoir’s ‘The Woman Destroyed’ is in ‘Plays By Women 10’, published by Methuen. She directed the Aldeburgh Documentary festival for 7 years and holds a Doctorate from the University of Suffolk, in acknowledgement of her contribution to the cultural life of Suffolk.
The OCLW Weinrebe Lectures are an annual series named in memory of Harry Weinrebe, a philanthropist and the founder of the Dorset Foundation.
This event will take place in the Leonard Wolfson Auditorium (LWA) (accessibility information). Wolfson College advises caution by wearing masks and not attending if you are feeling unwell.
