1927–1965

Ford Madox Ford's important “Preface” to The Left Bank confirmed Rhys's place at the modernist table. Subsequent early criticism demonstrates that his sense of her as a stylist was recognized by reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic. Her work was seriously reviewed in important literary and cultural magazines and serious newspapers such as the New Statesman, Spectator, Nation and Atheneum and Times Literary Supplement in Britain and New Republic and the New York Times Book Review in the USA. She was compared to Katherine Mansfield. Her first stories appealed to those who delighted in exploring literary techniques, even though her subject matter was already a problem for some readers. Some reviewers, such as D. B. Wyndham–Lewis, saw her stories as “purely French,” following Ford's comments in his preface on how much she had been influenced by young French writers in Paris, though the French connection did not please all reviewers.

Rhys published steadily between 1927 and 1939, so that critics were able to watch her development over a fairly short period of time. Quartet received very positive reviews for its economical style and the powerful use to which Rhys put it for the development of character. The bleakness of After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie was noticed by reviewers who nonetheless felt Rhys's style was outstanding. The writer Rebecca West found the novel “superb.” In 1931, a review in the Saturday Review of Literature remarked on the relation of Rhys's style to poetry.