The first article in the series about public libraries mentions the great debt that Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman said they owe to the libraries that they used as boys.
Jean Rhys and L. M. Montgomery are two more novelists who were great readers and had access to a public library when young. As girls they read Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, which made a big impression on them and later influenced their writing.
Jean Rhys and the public library
As mentioned in the article about psychological black magic, Jean Rhys wrote a prequel to Jane Eyre: Wide Sargasso Sea is considered to be her finest work.
Carole Angier says in her biography Jean Rhys: Life and Work that Jean Rhys was a member of the Hamilton Public Library in the British West Indies island of Dominica as a girl, and this was where she first encountered Jane Eyre. The course of her life might have been very different if she had not read this book at an impressionable age, and Wide Sargasso Sea might never have been written.
Jean Rhys had a lot of trouble with this book, which was probably started around 1945 but not published until 1966.
She said that she went to the local public library in Bude in Cornwall in 1957 to get a copy of Jane Eyre. She wanted to re-read it to refresh her memory of Mr Rochester's mad wife, whose story she was telling in Wide Sargasso Sea.
A Carnegie library was opened in Jean Rhys's home town of Roseau in Dominica in 1906, the year before she left for England. Did she read Jane Eyre here too?
L. M. Montgomery and the public library
Charlotte Brontë was one of L. M. Montgomery's favourite authors. Brontë works are said to have had a profound influence on some of her books, the Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon series in particular.
When touring the UK in 1911 she made a point of visiting Haworth, where the Brontës had lived.
Just like Jean Rhys, L. M. Montgomery was an islander. She lived in the Canadian town of Cavendish, Prince Edward Island as a girl. As her biographer Mary Henley Rubio tells us, the Cavendish Lending Library was a valuable resource for the inhabitants of the island who liked to read:
“The people in Cavendish also had access to the new and important books from Great Britain and the United States through their local public lending library, which had been established in the 1850s.”
From Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings
L. M. Montgomery made very good use of this facility: by the time she was ready to take her college entrance examination, she had read every book in the Cavendish Lending Library!
At the age of 23, she was helping to select books for this library. She was also reading biographies of women writers and re-reading the Brontë sisters’ stories.
All this helped to inform, inspire and encourage her. Without the Cavendish Lending Library, she might never have become such a renowned writer.
L. M. Montgomery around the age of 14. Are those books from the Cavendish library?
My first encounter with Jean Rhys
Here is a slight digression in the form of an account of how I first came across Jean Rhys. For once, it was not in a public library!
Many years ago, I was working on an assignment in a not very good area of London. After finishing work one day, I went to do some shopping in the nearest supermarket.
They had a small, token rack of paperbacks. I knew that it would just contain a few children's books, thrillers and some trashy romances; I knew that there would be nothing for me. However, one book that was at just the right height for me to see the title as I walked past caught my attention: it was Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. I had never heard of the author, but when I saw that this book with its evocative title was a prequel to Jane Eyre I decided it was worth trying.
Just as happened in the case of L. M. Boston, what was probably the only book they had that I would consider worth reading had ‘by chance’ been put in the best place for me to notice it. Such incidents are typical of my life.
I was not at all interested in Jean Rhys at the time, but much later I remembered her because of the Jane Eyre connection and she became yet another writer to investigate. If I had not accidentally come across Wide Sargasso Sea, I might never have mentioned her on here.
Another edition of Jean Rhys's award-winning book:
