Quartet

Résumé

Quartet is Jean Rhys's 1928 debut novel, set in Paris's bohemian café society. Originally published by Chatto & Windus, Quartet was Rhys's first published book other than her short story collection The Left Bank and Other Stories (1927). In the UK, Quartet was released under the publisher's preferred title Postures, which Rhys disliked. After it was well received in the US as Quartet (1929), Rhys had later UK editions re-titled to her original choice of Quartet, which alludes to four central characters comprising two couples. Quartet is a work of autobiographical fiction. It is a roman à clef based on her extramarital affair and acrimonious breakup with her literary mentor Ford Madox Ford, the English author and editor of The Transatlantic Review literary magazine. The affair occurred in Ford's Paris home under the eye of his common-law wife, Australian artist Stella Bowen, while Rhys's husband, Jean Lenglet, was in jail. Written in third-person narrative, Quartet is framed from the viewpoint of Rhys's fictional counterpart, Marya (nicknamed Mado). (This summary is from Wikipedia.)