Daphne du Maurier

Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, DBE (/duː ˈmɒrieɪ/; 13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989) was an English author and playwright.

Although she is classed as a romantic novelist, her stories have been described as “moody and resonant” with overtones of the paranormal. Her bestselling works were not at first taken seriously by critics, but have since earned an enduring reputation for narrative craft. Many have been successfully adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca, Frenchman’s Creek, My Cousin Rachel, and Jamaica Inn, and the short stories The Birds and Don’t Look Now/Not After Midnight.

Du Maurier spent much of her life in Cornwall, where most of her works are set. As her fame increased, she became more reclusive.[1]

Her parents were actor/manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and stage actress Muriel Beaumont. Her grandfather was writer and cartoonist George du Maurier.

Daphne du Maurier was born in London, the middle of three daughters of prominent actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and actress Muriel Beaumont. Her mother was a maternal niece of journalist, author, and lecturer William Comyns Beaumont.[2] Her grandfather was author and Punch cartoonist George du Maurier, who created the character of Svengali in the 1894 novel Trilby. Her elder sister, Angela du Maurier, also became a writer, and her younger sister Jeanne was a painter.[3]

Du Maurier’s family connections helped her establish her literary career, and she published some of her early work in Beaumont’s Bystander magazine. Her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931. Du Maurier was also a 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.[3]

As a young child, du Maurier met many prominent theatre actors, thanks to the celebrity of her father. On meeting Tallulah Bankhead, du Maurier was quoted as saying that Bankhead was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen.[4]

The novel Rebecca (1938) was one of du Maurier’s most successful works. It was an immediate hit, selling nearly 3 million copies between 1938 and 1965. The novel has never gone out of print, and has been adapted for both stage and screen several times. In the U.S. du Maurier won the National Book Award for favourite novel of 1938 for the book, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association.[5] In the UK, it was listed at number 14 of the “nation’s best-loved novel”s on the BBC’s 2003 survey The Big Read.[6]

Other significant works include The Scapegoat, The House on the Strand, and The King’s General. The last is set in the middle of the first and second English Civil Wars, written from the Royalist perspective of du Maurier’s adopted Cornwall. Unusually for du Maurier it has a female narrator.[7]

Several of du Maurier’s other novels have also been adapted for the screen, including Jamaica Inn, Frenchman’s Creek, Hungry Hill, and My Cousin Rachel. 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 Hitchcock’s Rebecca and Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now.