(Fiction; 1934; repr., Norton, 1982)
Voyage in the Dark is the first novel by Jean Rhys, the acclaimed author of Wide Sargasso Sea. The novel was heavily based on a diary of Rhys’s own romantic experience, and, in a fate not uncommon to first works, its first draft was destined for the drawer. It was published only years later, after two subsequent novels and significant revision. Like much of her work, Voyage in the Dark gives readers an authentic look into the wandering, conditional lives of young women in early-twentieth-century England, women from impoverished bourgeois families who, without stable income or profession, depended solely on the charity of their lovers for survival.
