My thanks for help with Dominica-related material to: Pearle Christian, Peter Harrington, Lennox Honychurch, Sonia Magloire Akba, Gregor Nassief, Polly Pattulo, Marina Warner, and also to the Observer for commissioning a travel essay on Jean Rhys’s Dominica, which enabled me to visit that unforgettable island before writing a book to which it has contributed so much.
My thanks for help about Rhys’s relationship with Lancelot Hugh Smith to: Charles Abel Smith, Dorothy Abel Smith, Andrew Lycett, Elizabeth Macdonald Buchanan, Andrew Martin Smith, Julian Martin Smith, Faith Raven and Victoria Wakefield. Also to Zachary Leader and to Gilly King, both for enabling me to visit Mount Clare at Roehampton and for access to an unpublished memoir by Lady Hugh Smith; and to Jennifer Zulfigar for arranging access to Lancey’s former Mayfair home (now part of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia).
My thanks for help in researching Rhys’s life and homes in the West Country to: Ellie Babbedge, Frieda Hughes, Alice May, Samantha Moss, David Thorn, Roy Stettiford, Frances Wood.
My thanks for help about Willis Feast’s family (Rhys’s hosts in Norfolk): to John Bolland.
My thanks to Tara and Nigel Fraser, Gerry Harrison; Judith Landry, Kika Markham and Susannah Stack for their especially generous help about Selma Vaz Dias, and to Hugh Fleetwood and to Kate Pocock, for leading me to Rhys’s important friendship with Rachel Ingalls; to Selina Hastings, regarding Rhys’s significant connection to Rosamund and John Lehmann; to Richard Schaubeck, regarding her friendship with Frank Hallman; and to Sophie Oliver, especially for sharing images of Rhys’s one surviving dress from her first years in London.
My thanks for help with interviews, correspondence, hospitality and—above all—their time: Carole Angier; the late Diana Athill; Gaia Banks; Jo Batterham, Marcelle Bernstein; a mother-daughter contribution from Gwen Burnyeat and Ruth Padel; John Byrne; Helen Carr; Susannah Clapp, Gordon Crosse, Polly Devlin, Meriel (Dickson) Gardner; Anne Dunn; Peter Eyre; Ruth Fainlight; James Fox; Antonia Fraser; Valerie Grove; Glenda Jackson; Alan Judd; Julie Kavanagh; Alexis Lykiard; Diana Melly; Paul Mendez; Sarah Papineau; David Plante; Tristram Powell; Diana Quick; Catherine Rovera; Madeline Slade; Barbara Smith; Hilary Spurling; Tom Staley; David Tobin (Walden Books); Esther Whitby; Rachel Wyndham.
Thanks for translation help to Martine Orsmond (Dutch) and to Stephen Romer (French).
Thanks for access to manuscripts and books are due to the British Library; the London Library; Megan Barnard, Elizabeth Garver, Jim Kuhn and Rick Watson at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas; and Frank Bowles, Cambridge University Archive, for the papers of Sir Henry Hesketh Bell.
Particular thanks are due to Marc Carlson and his team for all their help at the McFarlin Library, Tulsa, to Sean Latham for arranging for me to give a talk at the library, and to Joli Jenson for arranging everything to make my stay in Tulsa so memorably agreeable.
I am particularly indebted to Helen Carr, Lennox Honychurch, Peter Hulme, Polly Pattulo and Catherine Rovera for undertaking to read parts (and in Peter’s case, most kindly, all) of the work in progress and to make useful comments.
I’m grateful to Victoria Dickie for inviting me to a book club discussion of Wide Sargasso Sea which enabled me to air a few ideas at an early stage, and to rethink some important points.
More particular and considerable thanks are due to Francis Wyndham’s literary executor, Alan Hollinghurst, for a meticulously observed, thoughtful and so generously expressed reading of an almost final version of the book.
My special thanks and love, always, to my dearest Ted: my wise first reader, editor and loving supporter on what has proved to be an unsurprisingly emotional voyage into the often dark corners of an extraordinary woman’s mind.
As always, Anthony Goff and George Lucas have been magnificent—and inspiring—agents. My gratitude and unquantifiable thanks are also due to John Glusman and Helen Thomaides at Norton; to Arabella Pike, Kate Johnson and Jo Thompson at HarperCollins, and to Katy Archer, whose project editing has been a model of its kind. My heartfelt thanks to Emma Pidsley, at HarperCollins, and Ingsu Liu and Matt Dorfman, at Norton, for their gorgeous covers; Mark Wells for indexing; and Martin Brown for the map of Dominica. It’s been wonderful to be buoyed up by such commitment and enthusiasm for a book that means so much to me.
I am especially grateful to Jean Rhys’s granddaughter, Dr. Ellen Moerman, and to Catherine Rovera, separately, for their generous and discrete contributions.
Last, but far from least, my thanks to Anthony Griffiths for the good-humoured and patient tech support and expertise that I could always rely upon to rescue me from disaster.
All mistakes are, of course, my own.