Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, (; 13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989) was an English novelist, biographer and playwright. Her parents were actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and his wife, actress Muriel Beaumont. Her grandfather George du Maurier was a writer and cartoonist. Du Maurier spent much of her life in Cornwall, where most of her works are set. As her fame increased, she became more reclusive.Dunn, Jane. Daphne du Maurier and Her Sisters. HarperPress (2013)
Some of du Maurier's notable works include the novels Jamaica Inn (1936), Rebecca (1938) and My Cousin Rachel (1951), and the short stories "The Birds" (1952) and "Don't Look Now" (1971). Her works have been adapted into film, with notable examples including Jamaica Inn (1939), Rebecca (1940) and The Birds (1963) by Alfred Hitchcock, Don't Look Now (1973) by Nicolas Roeg, My Cousin Rachel (2017) by Roger Michell, and Rebecca (2020) by Ben Wheatley.
Early life
Daphne du Maurier was born on 13 May 1907 at 24 Cumberland Terrace, Regent's Park, London, the middle of three daughters of prominent actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and actress Muriel Beaumont. Her paternal grandfather was George du Maurier, Punch cartoonist and author of the 1894 novel Trilby. Her paternal uncle Guy du Maurier was a playwright. Her mother was a paternal niece of journalist, author, and lecturer Comyns Beaumont.Daphne du Maurier profile by Richard Kelly (essay date 1987), "The World of the Macabre: The Short Stories", Daphne du Maurier, Twayne Publishers, 1987, pp. 123–40. Her elder sister, Angela du Maurier, became an actress and later also a writer, and her younger sister Jeanne du Maurier was a painter.Dunn, Jane Daphne du Maurier and her SistersHarperPress (2013) She was a first cousin of the Llewelyn Davies boys, who were J. M. Barrie's inspiration for the characters in the play Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. She was also a cousin of director Gabrielle Beaumont.
As a child, du Maurier met many prominent theatre actors, because of 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.
Du Maurier spent her childhood at Cannon Hall, Hampstead, the family's London residence, and summers at their home in Fowey, Cornwall, where they also lived during the war years.
Career Novels, short stories, and biographies Her family connections helped her establish her literary career, and she published some of her early work in her great-uncle Comyns Beaumont's Bystander magazine. Her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931.
The Gothic novel Rebecca (1938) was du Maurier's most successful work. It was an immediate hit, selling nearly 3 million copies between 1938 and 1965. The novel has never gone out of print. In the United States, du Maurier won the National Book Award for favourite novel of 1938, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association."Book About Plants Receives Award: Dr. Fairchild's 'Garden' Work Cited by Booksellers", The New York Times, 15 February 1939, p. 20. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2007). 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."The Big Read", BBC (April 2003). Retrieved 18 October 2012.
Other significant works include Jamaica Inn, Frenchman's Creek, Hungry Hill, My Cousin Rachel, The Scapegoat, The House on the Strand, and The King's General. The last is set in Cornwall during the English Civil War, and is written from the Royalist perspective.
Du Maurier was often categorised as a "romantic novelist", a term that she deplored,BBC interview, 1979. given that her novels rarely have a happy ending, and often have sinister overtones and shadows of the paranormal. In this light, she has more in common with the "sensation novels" of Wilkie Collins and others, which she admired.Oriel Malet (ed.), Letters from Menabilly, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993. The critic Kate Kellaway wrote: "Du Maurier was mistress of calculated irresolution. She did not want to put her readers' minds at rest. She wanted her riddles to persist. She wanted the novels to continue to haunt us beyond their endings."Kate Kellaway, The Observer, 15 April 2007. "Daphne's unruly passions", theguardian.com; retrieved 12 May 2016.
Du Maurier's novel Mary Anne (1954) is a fictionalised account of her great-great-grandmother, Mary Anne Clarke née Thompson (1776–1852), who, from 1803 to 1808, was mistress of Frederick Augustus, 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 King George IV and King William IV. The central character of her last novel, Rule Britannia, is an aging actress, thought to be based on Gladys Cooper (to whom it is dedicated).
Du Maurier's short stories are darker: "The Birds", "Don't Look Now", "The Apple Tree", and "The Blue Lenses" are finely crafted tales of terror that shocked and surprised her audience in equal measure. As her biographer Margaret Forster wrote, "She satisfied all the questionable criteria of popular fiction, and yet satisfied too the exacting requirements of 'real literature'."
The discovery, in 2011, of a collection of du Maurier's forgotten short stories, written when the author was 21, provides some insight into her mature style. One of them, "The Doll", concerns a young woman's obsession with a mechanical male sex doll; it has been deemed by du Maurier's son Kit Browning to be "quite ahead of its time".
She also wrote non-fiction, including several biographies such as Gerald, her father's biography. The Glass-Blowers traces her French Huguenot ancestry and vividly depicts the French Revolution. The du Mauriers traces the family's move from France to England in the 19th century.
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 book, Rule Britannia (1972), was not well-received, her biographer, Margaret Forster, considering it to be the author's poorest novel.
Film and television adaptations
The main screen adaptations of du Maurier's novels and short stories include:
Jamaica Inn (1939 film) – Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Maureen O'Hara and Charles Laughton. Rebecca (1940 film) – Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. Frenchman's Creek (1944 film) – Directed by Mitchell Leisen, starring Joan Fontaine and Arturo de Córdova. The Years Between (1946 film) – Directed by Compton Bennett, starring Valerie Hobson and Michael Redgrave. Hungry Hill (1947 film) – Directed by Brian Desmond Hurst, starring Margaret Lockwood and Dennis Price. My Cousin Rachel (1952 film) – Directed by Henry Koster, starring Olivia de Havilland and Richard Burton. The Scapegoat (1959 film) – Directed by Robert Hamer, starring Alec Guinness and Bette Davis. The Birds (1963 film, based on the short story) – Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor. Don't Look Now (1973 film, based on the short story) – Directed by Nicolas Roeg, starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. Rebecca (1979 TV series) – BBC adaptation starring Jeremy Brett and Joanna David. Jamaica Inn (1983 TV serial) – Starring Jane Seymour and Patrick McGoohan. My Cousin Rachel (1983 TV serial) – BBC adaptation starring Geraldine Chaplin. The Birds II: Land's End (1994 TV film sequel) – Directed by Rick Rosenthal. Rebecca (1997 TV miniseries) – Starring Charles Dance, Emilia Fox and Diana Rigg. The Scapegoat (2012 TV film) – Directed by Charles Sturridge, starring Matthew Rhys and Eileen Atkins. Jamaica Inn (2014 TV miniseries) – Produced by the BBC, starring Jessica Brown Findlay. My Cousin Rachel (2017 film) – Directed by Roger Michell, starring Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin. Rebecca (2020 film) – Directed by Ben Wheatley, starring Lily James and Armie Hammer.
Du Maurier was notoriously critical of screen adaptations of her work. She often maintained that the only two feature films she genuinely liked were Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) and Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973).
Jamaica Inn (1939): Disavowed by both Hitchcock and du Maurier. The narrative ending was rewritten to accommodate the star status and ego of Charles Laughton (playing Sir Humphrey Pengallan), diluting the tension of the source material. Rebecca (1940): Approved by du Maurier largely due to producer David O. Selznick's strict requirement that the screenplay adhere closely to her original text, counteracting Hitchcock's inclination to make broader changes. My Cousin Rachel (1952): Du Maurier felt that Olivia de Havilland was miscast in the role of the enigmatic anti-heroine Rachel, missing the darker ambiguity of the character. The Scapegoat (1959): Partly financed by du Maurier herself, who lobbied to have Alec Guinness cast in the lead. She subsequently expressed regret over his casting, feeling the production failed to capture the nuances of the characters. The Birds (1963): Based on her short story, the film version was strongly disliked by du Maurier. She was baffled by Hitchcock's decision to move the setting from rural Cornwall to sunny California and shift the narrative focus away from her bleak apocalyptic tone. Don't Look Now (1973): Although du Maurier initially harboured reservations about the explicit tone and cinematic choices of Nicolas Roeg's direction, she wrote to Roeg after viewing the completed film to praise how well it captured the psychological atmosphere of her story.
Playwright Du Maurier wrote three plays. Her first was an adaptation of her novel Rebecca, which opened at the Queen's Theatre in London on 5 March 1940 in a production by George Devine, starring Celia Johnson and Owen Nares as the De Winters and Margaret Rutherford as Mrs Danvers. After 181 performances, the production transferred to the Strand Theatre, with Jill Furse taking over as the second Mrs De Winter and Mary Merrall as Mrs Danvers, with a further run of 176 performances.
In 1943 she wrote the autobiographically inspired drama The Years Between about the unexpected return of a senior officer, thought killed in action, who finds that his wife has taken his seat as Member of Parliament (MP) and has started a romantic relationship with a local farmer. It was first staged at the Manchester Opera House in 1944 and then transferred to London, opening at Wyndham's Theatre on 10 January 1945, starring Nora Swinburne and Clive Brook. The production, directed by Irene Hentschel, became a long-running hit, completing 617 performances. It was revived by Caroline Smith at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames on 5 September 2007, starring Karen Ascoe and Mark Tandy.John Thaxter, "The Years Between", The Stage, 10 September 2007.
Her third play, September Tide, portrays a middle-aged woman whose bohemian artist son-in-law falls in love with her. Again directed by Irene Hentschel, it opened at the Aldwych Theatre on 15 December 1948 with Gertrude Lawrence as Stella. It closed in August 1949 after 267 performances.
Accusations of plagiarism Two authors accused du Maurier of plagiarism, but were unable to prove their claims.
Rebecca Shortly after Rebecca was published in Brazil, critic Álvaro Lins pointed out many resemblances to the 1934 book, A Sucessora (The Successor), by Brazilian writer Carolina Nabuco. According to Nabuco and her editor, not only the main plot, but also situations and entire dialogues had been copied. Du Maurier denied having copied Nabuco's book, as did her publisher, pointing out that the plot elements said to have been plagiarised were quite common.