Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning DBE (13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989; pronounced /ˈdæfni duː ˈmɒrieɪ/) was an English author and playwright. Many of her works have been adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1941, Jamaica Inn, and her short stories The Birds and Don't Look Now. The first three were directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Her elder sister was Angela du Maurier was also a writer and her grandfather George du Maurier was a writer and cartoonist.
Easton Press Daphne du Maurier books
The Birds and Other Stories - Horror Classics - 2006
Rebecca - Horror Classics - 2009
Franklin Library Daphne du Maurier books
Kiss Me Again Stranger - Collected Stories of the World's Greatest Writers - 1981
Rebecca - Library of Mystery Masterpieces - 1987
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Author Daphne du Maurier
Daphne du Maurier was born in London (although she spent most of her life in her beloved Cornwall), the second of three daughters of the prominent actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and actress Muriel Beaumont (maternal niece of William Comyns Beaumont). Her grandfather was the author and Punch cartoonist George du Maurier, who created the character of Svengali in the novel Trilby. These connections helped her in establishing her literary career; du Maurier published some of her very early work in his Bystander magazine, and her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931. Du Maurier was also the cousin of the Llewelyn Davies boys, who served as J.M. Barrie's inspiration for the characters in the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. As a young child she was introduced to many of the brightest stars of the theatre thanks to the celebrity of her father; notably, on meeting Tallulah Bankhead she was quoted as saying that the actress was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen.
She married Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick "Boy" Browning and had two daughters and a son (Tessa, Flavia and Christian). Biographers have noted that the marriage was at times somewhat chilly and have also established that du Maurier could be aloof and distant to her children, especially the girls, when immersed in her writing. "Boy" died in 1965 and soon after Daphne moved to Kilmarth, near Par, which became the setting for The House on the Strand.
Du Maurier has often been painted as a frostily private recluse who rarely mixed in society or gave interviews. A notable exception to this came after the release of the film A Bridge Too Far in which her late husband was portrayed in a less-than-flattering light. Du Maurier was incensed and wrote to the national newspapers decrying what she considered unforgivable treatment.[3] Once out of the glare of the public spotlight, however, many remembered her as a warm and immensely funny person who was a welcoming hostess to guests at Menabilly,[4] the house she leased for many years (from the Rashleigh family) in Cornwall. Letters from Menabilly contains the letters from du Maurier to Malet over 30 years, with Malet's commentary. (Malet's real name is Auriel Malet Vaughan.)
Daphne du Maurier was a member of the Cornish nationalist pressure group/political party Mebyon Kernow. Du Maurier was born and died in the same years as Laurence Olivier, who portrayed Maxim de Winter in Hitchcock's film of Rebecca (1940). Du Maurier was born on 13 May 1907, while Olivier was born on 22 May, and du Maurier died on 19 April 1989, aged 81, and Olivier on 11 July, aged 82. Du Maurier was spoofed by her slightly older fellow writer P. G. Wodehouse as "Daphne Dolores Morehead". Daphne du Maurier was one of five 'Women of Achievement' selected for a set of British stamps issued in August 1996. The others were Dorothy Hodgkin (scientist), Margot Fonteyn (ballerina / choreographer), Elizabeth Frink (sculptor) and Marea Hartman (sports administrator).
Secret relationships
After her death in 1989, numerous references were made to her secret bisexuality; an affair with Gertrude Lawrence, as well as her attraction for the wife of her American publisher, Ellen Doubleday, were cited. Du Maurier stated in her memoirs that her father, noted manager Gerald Du Maurier, had wanted a son and being a tomboy, she had naturally wished to have been born a boy. Her father was vociferously homophobic.
In correspondence released by her family for the first time to her biographer, Margaret Forster, du Maurier explained to a trusted few her own unique slant on her sexuality: her personality, she explained, comprised two distinct people being the loving wife and mother (the side she shows to the world) and the lover (a decidedly male energy) hidden to virtually everyone and the power behind her artistic creativity. According to the biography Du Maurier believed the male energy was the demon which fueled her creative life as a writer. One can best try to understand this if one looks to novels such as The Scapegoat or The House on the Strand, written in the first person and as male figures, as offering convincing evidence. Forster maintains that it became evident in personal letters revealed after her death, however, that du Maurier's denial of her bisexuality unveiled a homophobic fear of her true nature.
Death
She died at the age of 81 at her home in Cornwall, the region which had been the setting for many of her books. Her body was cremated and her ashes were scattered at Kilmarth.
Writer
Literary critics have sometimes berated du Maurier's works for not being 'intellectually heavyweight' like those of George Eliot or Iris Murdoch, but to fully understand her importance in English literature one must look first to the era in which she wrote. At the onset of her career, with the horrors of the 1st World War still a fresh memory and the storm-clouds of the 2nd World War rumbling on the horizon, her novels offered much-needed glamour, romanticism and above all, escapism. But by the 1950s, when the socially and politically critical "angry young writers" were in vogue, her writing was felt by some to belong to a bygone age of fiction. Today she has been reappraised as a first-rate storyteller, a mistress of suspense: her ability to recreate a sense of place is much admired, and her work remains popular worldwide. For several decades she was the number one author for library book borrowings.
The novel Rebecca, which has been adapted for stage and screen on several occasions, is generally regarded as her masterpiece. One of her strongest influences here was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Her fascination with the Brontë family is also apparent in The Infernal World of Bramwell Bronté, her biography of the troubled elder brother to the Bronte girls. The fact that their mother had been Cornish no doubt added to her interest.
Other notable works include The Scapegoat, The House on the Strand, and The King's General. The latter is set in the middle of the 1st and 2nd English Civil Wars. Though written from the Royalist perspective of her native Cornwall, it gives a fairly neutral view of this period of history and is written with a great flair for that era.
In addition to Rebecca, several of her other novels have been adapted for the screen, including Jamaica Inn, Frenchman's Creek, Hungry Hill and My Cousin Rachel (1951). The Hitchcock film The Birds (1963) is based on a treatment of one of her short stories, as is the film Don't Look Now (1973). Of the films, du Maurier often complained that the only ones she liked were Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca and Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now. Hitchcock's treatment of Jamaica Inn involved a complete re-write of the ending in order to accommodate the ego of its star, Charles Laughton. Du Maurier also felt that Olivia de Havilland was totally wrong as the (anti-)heroine in My Cousin Rachel. Frenchman's Creek fared rather better with its lavish technicolour sets and costumes, though Du Maurier later regretted her choice of Alec Guinness as the lead in the film of The Scapegoat which she partly financed.
Du Maurier was often categorised as a "romantic novelist" (a term she deplored), though most of her novels, with the notable exception of Frenchman's Creek, are quite different from the stereotypical format of a Georgette Heyer or Barbara Cartland novel. Du Maurier's novels rarely have a happy ending, and her brand of romanticism is often at odds with the sinister overtones and shadows of the paranormal she so favoured. In this light, she has more in common with the 'sensation novels' of Wilkie Collins et al., which she admired.
Indeed, it was in her short stories that she was able to give free rein to the harrowing and terrifying side of her imagination; The Birds, Don't Look Now, The Apple Tree and The Blue Lenses are exquisitely crafted tales of terror which shocked and surprised her audience in equal measure. Perhaps more than at any other time, du Maurier was anxious as to how her bold new writing style would be received, not just with her readers (and to some extent her critics, though by then she had grown wearily accustomed to their often luke-warm reviews) but her immediate circle of family and friends.
In later life she wrote non-fiction, including several biographies which were well-received. This no doubt came from a deep-rooted desire to be accepted as a serious writer, comparing herself to her close literary neighbour, A. L. Rowse, the celebrated historian and essayist, who lived a few miles away from her house near Fowey.
Also of interest are the "family" novels/biographies which du Maurier wrote of her own ancestry, of which Gerald, the biography of her father, was most lauded. Later she wrote The Glass-Blowers, which traces her French ancestry and gives a vivid depiction of the French Revolution. The du Mauriers is a sequel of sorts, describing the somewhat problematic ways in which the family moved from France to England in the 19th Century and finally Mary Anne, a novel based on the life of a notable, and infamous, English ancestor - her great-grandmother Mary Anne Clarke, former mistress of Frederick, Duke of York.
Her final novels reveal just how far her writing style had evolved; The House on the Strand (1969) combines elements of "mental time-travel", a tragic love-affair in 14th century Cornwall, and the dangers of using mind-altering drugs. Her final novel, Rule Britannia, written post-Vietnam, plays with the resentment of English people in general and Cornish people in particular at the increasing dominance of the USA.
Daphne du Maurier books in order
The Loving Spirit (1931)
I'll Never Be Young Again (1932)
Julius (1933)
Jamaica Inn (1936)
Rebecca (1938)
Rebecca (1940) (play—du Maurier's own stage adaptation of her novel)
Happy Christmas (1940)
Come Wind, Come Weather (1940)
Frenchman's Creek (1941)
Hungry Hill (1943)
The Years Between (1945)
The King's General (1946)
September Tide (1948)
The Parasites (1949)
My Cousin Rachel (1951)
The Apple Tree (1952) (Short story collection including Kiss Me Again, Stranger)
Mary Anne (1954)
The Scapegoat (1957)
Early Stories (1959)
The Breaking Point (1959) (Short story collection including The Blue Lenses)
Castle Dor (1961) (with Sir Alfred Quiller-Couch)
The Birds and Other Stories (1963)
The Flight of the Falcon (1965)
The House on the Strand (1969)
Not After Midnight (1971) (Short story collection including Don't Look Now)
Rule Britannia (1972)
The Rendezvous and Other Stories (1980)
Non-fiction
Gerald (1934)
The du Mauriers (1937)
The Young George du Maurier (1951)
The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë (1960)
The Glass-Blowers (1963)
Vanishing Cornwall (1967)
Golden Lads (1975)
The Winding Stairs (1976)
Growing Pains, The Shaping of a Writer (1977)
Enchanted Cornwall (1989)
Source and additional information: Daphne du Maurier