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'Daphne, Lady Browning' DBE (13 May, 1907–19 April, 1989), commonly known as 'Dame Daphne du Maurier' (), was a famous British novelist best known for her short story "The Birds" and her classic novel ''Rebecca'', published in 1938. Both were adapted into films by Alfred Hitchcock, ''Rebecca'' winning the Oscar for Best Picture.

Contents

Personal life

Titles

Novels and short stories

Fiction

Non-fiction

Awards and recognition

Trivia

References

See also

External links

Personal life

Du Maurier was born in London (though spent most of her life in her beloved Cornwall), the second of three daughters of the famous actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and actress Muriel Beaumont (maternal niece of William Comyns Beaumont).^[1] Her grandfather was the author and Punch cartoonist, George du Maurier who created the character of Svengali in the novel ''Trilby''. These connections gave her a head start in her literary career; Beaumont 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 (George, Jack, Peter, Michael, and Nicholas), who are known for serving as J.M. Barrie's inspiration for the play ''Peter Pan''. 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 drawn attention to the fact that the marriage was at times somewhat chilly and that du Maurier could be aloof and distant to her children, especially the girls, when immersed in her writing.^[2] However, as a product of well-to-do Edwardian society in which the nanny dealt with the children, this is hardly surprising.
Indeed, she has often been painted as a frostily private recluse who rarely mixed in society or gave interviews.^[3] 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.^[4] 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 Menabilly,^[5] the house she leased for many years (from the Rashleigh family) in Cornwall.
After her death, numerous references were made to her alleged lesbianism; an affair with Gertrude Lawrence as well as her infatuation for the wife of her American publisher, Ellen Doubleday, were cited.^[3] Du Maurier stated in her memoirs that her father had wanted a son and being a tomboy, she had naturally wished to have been born a boy. However, this is perhaps too simplistic an explanation: a childhood brought into contact with the theatrical and artistic people of her parents' circle, many of whom were homosexual, should have meant for a liberal atmosphere. Yet strangely for a man in his profession, her father was vociferously homophobic.^[7] For a daughter who virtually hero-worshipped her father, this was bound to have major repercussions in later life; guilt, shame and an instilled belief that homosexuality was utterly abhorrent could not have helped her form rational conclusions to her own doubts and anxieties.^[3] In letters released to her official biographer after her death, du Maurier explained to a trusted few her own unique slant on her sexuality; her personality, she informs, comprises two distinct people: 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. ^[3]
This appears somewhat contrived by today's standards; a desperate explaining-away of deeply troubling feelings that she battled with all her life and an avoidance of the truth. Yet du Maurier undoubtedly believed this was the case; this was the demon which fueled her creative life as a writer.^[10] One can best try to understand this if one looks to those novels such as ''The Scapegoat'' or ''The House on the Strand'', written in the first person and as men, and being utterly convincing.

Titles

Daphne du Maurier was also referred to as the following :

★ 'Dame Daphne du Maurier'

★ 'Lady Browning'

Novels and short stories

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 Branwell Brontë'', her biography of the troubled elder brother to the Brontë 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''.^[11] ''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.^[12]
Du Maurier was often categorised as a "romantic novelist" (a term she deplored),^[13] 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.^[12]
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.
She died at the age of 81 at her home in Cornwall, a region which had been the setting for many of her books. In accordance with her wishes, her body was cremated and her ashes were scattered on the cliffs near her home.
In late 2006 a previously unknown work titled 'And His Letters Grew Colder' was discovered. This was estimated to have been written in the late 1920's, and takes the form of a series of letters tracing an adulterous passionate affair from initial ardour to deflated acrimony.

Fiction

★ ''The Loving Spirit'' (1931)

★ ''I'll Never Be Young Again'' (1932)

★ ''Julius'' (1933)

★ ''Jamaica Inn'' (1936)

★ ''Rebecca'' (1938)

★ ''Come Wind, Come Weather'' (1940) (short story collection)

★ ''Frenchman's Creek'' (1941)

★ ''Hungry Hill'' (1943)

★ ''The King's General'' (1946)

★ "The Years Between" (1946) (play)

★ ''The Parasites'' (1949)

★ "September Tide" (1949) (play)

★ ''My Cousin Rachel'' (1951)

★ ''The Apple Tree'' (1952) (short story collection)

★ ''The Scapegoat'' (1957)

★ ''Early Stories'' (1959) (short story collection, stories written between 1927-1930^[15])

★ ''The Breaking Point'' (1959) (short story collection, AKA ''The Blue Lenses'')

★ ''Castle Dor'' (1961) (with Sir Alfred Quiller-Couch^[16])

★ ''The Birds and Other Stories'' (1963) (republication of ''The Apple Tree''^[17])

★ ''The Flight of the Falcon'' (1965)

★ ''The House on the Strand'' (1969)

★ ''Not After Midnight'' (1971) (short story collection, AKA ''Don't Look Now''^[18])

★ ''Rule Britannia'' (1972)

Non-fiction

★ ''Gerald'' (1934)

★ ''The du Mauriers'' (1937)

★ ''The Young George du Maurier'' (1951)

★ ''Mary Anne'' (1954)

★ ''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) (AKA ''Myself When Young - the Shaping of a Writer'')

★ ''Enchanted Cornwall'' (1989)

Awards and recognition

Du Maurier was named a Dame of the British Empire.

Trivia

★ Du Maurier was a member of the Cornish nationalist pressure group/political party Mebyon Kernow.

★ In Ken Follett's thriller ''The Key to Rebecca'', du Maurier's novel ''Rebecca'' is used as the key for a code used by a German spy in World War II Cairo.

★ Neville Chamberlain is reputed to have read ''Rebecca'' on the plane journey which led to Adolf Hitler signing the Munich Agreement.

★ The central character of her last novel, ''Rule Britannia'', is an aging and eccentric actress who was based on Gertrude Lawrence and Gladys Cooper (to whom it is dedicated). However, the character is most recognisably du Maurier herself.

★ Du Maurier's novel ''Mary Anne'' (1954) is a fictionalised account of the real-life story of her great-great grandmother, Mary Anne Clarke née Thompson (1776-1852). Mary Anne Clarke from 1803 to 1808 was mistress of Frederick Augustus, the Duke of York and Albany (1763-1827). He was the "Grand Old Duke of York" of the nursery rhyme, a son of King George III and brother of the later King George IV.

★ Du Maurier was spoofed by her slightly older fellow writer P.G. Wodehouse as "Daphne Dolores Morehead".

References

★ Daphne du Maurier, , Richard, Kelly, Twayne, 1987, ISBN 0-8057-6931-5

★ Obituary in ''The Independent'' April 21, 1989

★ ''Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, London, 1887– : Du Maurier, Dame Daphne (1907–1989); Browning, Sir Frederick Arthur Montague (1896–1965); Frederick, Prince, Duke of York and Albany (1763-1827); Clarke, Mary Anne (1776?-1852).

★ Du Maurier, Daphne, ''Mary Anne'', Victor Gollancz Ltd, London, 1954.
1. ''du Maurier, Daphne | Richard Kelly (essay date 1987)'', "The World of the Macabre: The Short Stories," in ''Daphne Du Maurier'', Twayne Publishers, 1987, pp. 123-40.
2. Margaret Forster, Daphne du Maurier, Chatto & Windus
3. Margaret Forster, See above
4. Judith Cook, Daphne, Bantam Press
5. Oriel Mallet, Letters from Menabilly, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
6. Margaret Forster, See above
7. Thornton, Michael ''Daphne's terrible secret'', Daily Mail (London), 11May 2007
8. Margaret Forster, See above
9. Margaret Forster, See above
10. Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young, Victor Gollancz
11. Martyn Shallcross, Daphne du Maurier Country,Bossiney Books
12. Oriel Mallet, See above
13. BBC Interview, 1979
14. Oriel Mallet, See above
15. '' Early Stories'' at DuMaurier.org
16. ''Castle Dor'' at DuMaurier.org
17. ''The Birds'' at DuMaurier.org
18. ''Not After Midnight'' at DuMaurier.org

See also

★ ''The Queen's Book of the Red Cross''

External links

★ www.dumaurier.org - site promoting the annual The Daphne du Maurier
Festival of Arts & Literature, held during May at Fowey, Cornwall.

★ Author's Calendar biography of Daphne du Maurier

★ Interview with Daphne du Maurier — 1977

★ Website of The Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire

★ Web news magazine of the Brontë Parsonage Museum

★ Du Maurier Festival 2007