Wide Sargasso Sea

This novel, first published in 1966, returns to the figure known in Jane Eyre as Bertha Mason and tells her life before Thornfield. Antoinette Cosway grows up a Creole girl in Jamaica after emancipation, among a ruined plantation household, hostile neighbours, and a mother sliding into breakdown. An English husband, never named as Rochester in the text, marries her for money and takes her to his estate, then to England. Differences of language, race, and climate turn the marriage into mistrust and confinement. The book is a colonial prequel and a study of who gets to narrate madness.

Bound in dark green and pale green cloth, divided vertically down the centre of each board, with a design in green by Daunt, who hand-cut the spine lettering. Printed on pale green paper. Page tops stained light blue. Green blue endleaves. Green-blue slipcase.