The Left Bank and Other Stories is the first collection of short stories and literary debut of Dominican author Jean Rhys. It was first published by Jonathan Cape (London) and Harper & Brothers (New York) in 1927, and contained a preface by Ford Madox Ford.Malcolm and Malcolm, 1996, pp. 133–134: Selected Bibliography.Seymour, 2022, p. 11: See footnote for correct title of book

The original subtitle of the collection was "sketches and studies of present-day Bohemian Paris".Malcolm and Malcolm, 1996, p. 5: "Ford indicates that the author will be…a guide the Bohemia of the stories's settings."

Most of the twenty-two stories are impressionistic vignettes based on Rhys's own life experiences in and around the Left Bank of Paris. Some ("Mixing Cocktails and "Again the Antilles") are drawn from Rhys's early years in Dominica.Malcolm and Malcolm, 1996, p. 11: "Contemporary critics…frequently described [the stories] as vignettes rather than stories proper."Midori Saito, The Lost Motherland? Image of the Caribbean in the Early Works of Jean Rhys: Left Bank and Voyage in the Dark, The University of the West Indies, 2004. The final story, Vienne, is based on her post-World War I life in Vienna with first husband Jean Lenglet, and was originally published in The Transatlantic Review in 1924.

Publication of The Left Bank and Other Stories was sponsored by Rhys's lover and literary mentor, Ford Madox Ford, sending the stories to his London contact, influential publisher's reader Edward Garnett. The book was well received by critics on its initial release, establishing Rhys's early writing career.

The book went out of print during Rhys's 1939–1966 period of obscurity but, following the resurgence of her career due to Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), selections from The Left Bank were republished in part by André Deutsch in Tigers are Better-Looking (1968), which included nine of the original twenty-two stories. The volume was next republished 1976 by W. W. Norton & Company, then again after Rhys's death by Penguin Classics incorporated into a wider compilation entitled Jean Rhys, The Collected Short Stories.

Stories "Illusion" "A Spiritualist" "From A French Prison" "In a Café" "Tout Montparnasse and a Lady" "Mannequin" "In the Luxembourg Gardens" "Tea with an Artist" "Trio" "Mixing Cocktails" "Again the Antilles" "Hunger" "Discourse of a Lady Standing a Dinner to a Down-and-Out Friend" "A Night" "In the Rue de l'Arivée" "Learning to be a Mother" "The Blue Bird" "The Grey Day" "The Sidi" "At The Villa d'Or" "La Grosse Fifi" "Vienne"

Retrospective appraisal Biographer Carole Angier reports that this first volume of short stories garnered Rhys significant critical approval.Angier, 1990, p. 164: "...for a first collection, it was quite widely and well reviewed."

Literary critic Rayner Heppenstall deems Rhys's pieces in The Left Bank to be "less than brilliant."Heppenstall, 1968, p. 124.

Evelyn Toynton in The American Scholar praises the "mocking lucidity" with which Rhys depicted the sexual and social degradations of her female protagonists, adding this caveat

Rhys's short fiction in The Left Bank is notable for the range of narrative devices she deploys. Half of the stories are told by women, both explicitly and inferred by dialogue, as well as participant and nonparticipant narrators. The point-of-view is often that of limited omnicent.Malcolm and Malcolm, 1996, p. 3: "...her stories display a remarkable resourcefulness in narration." And p. 4: On point-of-view.

The female narrators in these stories escort the reader through the Bohemian settings of her wealthy benefactors and lovers:

Footnotes

Sources Malcolm, Cheryl Alexander, and Malcolm, David. 1996. Jean Rhys: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twayne Publishers, Simon & Schuster, New York. Heppenstall, Rayner. 1968. "Bitter-sweet", Review of Tigers Are Better-Looking. The Spectator, April 5, 1968, 446–447 in A Study of the Short Fiction, pp. 124–125. Twayne Publishers, Simon & Schuster, New York. Rhys, Jean. 1987. Jean Rhys: The Collected Short Stories. W. W. Norton & Company, New York, London. Toynton, Evelyn. 1992. Life into Art; review of Jean Rhys: Life and Work by Carole Angier. The American Scholar, Spring 1992, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Spring 1992), pp. 298, 300–302. The Phi Beta Kappa Society. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41212018 Accessed 10 January, 2026.

Further reading Angier, Carole, Jean Rhys: Life and Work, London: André Deutsch, 1990 Pizzichini, Lilian, The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009 Frickey, Pierrette M, Critical Perspectives on Jean Rhys, Washington, DC: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1990 Rhys, Jean, Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography, London: André Deutsch, 1979

External links Irene Thompson, "The Left Bank Apéritifs of Jean Rhys and Ernest Hemingway", The Georgia Review, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Spring 1981), pp. 94–106. Gwendoline Riley, "From rum to gay | Gwendoline Riley on the vehement, brilliant short stories of Jean Rhys", The Times Literary Supplement, 28 April 2017. Chris Power, "A brief survey of the short story: Jean Rhys", The Guardian, 15 April 2014. Maud Newton & Alexander Chee, After the Affair, Granta, 22 June 2009. Kate Jones, Exploring the Short Stories of Jean Rhys, The Short Story, 28 September 2016.