Daphne du Maurier

Author profile

born

in London, The United Kingdom

May 13, 1907

died

April 19, 1989

gender

female

website

http://www.dumaurier.org

genre

Literature & Fiction, Mystery & Thrillers, Historical Fiction

About this author

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If Daphne du Maurier had written only Rebecca, she would still be one of the great shapers of popular culture and the modern imagination. Few writers have created more magical and mysterious places than Jamaica Inn and Manderley, buildings invested with a rich character that gives them a memorable life of their own.

In many ways the life of Daphne du Maurier resembles that of a fairy tale. Born into a family with a rich artistic and historical background, the daughter of a famous actor-manager, she was indulged as a child and grew up enjoying enormous freedom from financial and parental restraint. She spent her youth sailing boats, travelling on the Continent with friends, and writing stories. A prestigious publishing house accepted her firs...more If Daphne du Maurier had written only Rebecca, she would still be one of the great shapers of popular culture and the modern imagination. Few writers have created more magical and mysterious places than Jamaica Inn and Manderley, buildings invested with a rich character that gives them a memorable life of their own.

In many ways the life of Daphne du Maurier resembles that of a fairy tale. Born into a family with a rich artistic and historical background, the daughter of a famous actor-manager, she was indulged as a child and grew up enjoying enormous freedom from financial and parental restraint. She spent her youth sailing boats, travelling on the Continent with friends, and writing stories. A prestigious publishing house accepted her first novel when she was in her early twenties, and its publication brought her not only fame but the attentions of a handsome soldier, Major (later Lieutenant-General Sir) Frederick Browning, who married her.

Her subsequent novels became bestsellers, earning her enormous wealth and fame. While Alfred Hitchcock's film based upon her novel proceeded to make her one of the best-known authors in the world, she enjoyed the life of a fairy princess in a mansion in Cornwall called Menabilly, which served as the model for Manderley in Rebecca.

Daphne du Maurier was obsessed with the past. She intensively researched the lives of Francis and Anthony Bacon, the history of Cornwall, the Regency period, and nineteenth-century France and England, Above all, however, she was obsessed with her own family history, which she chronicled in Gerald: a Portrait, a biography of her father; The du Mauriers, a study of her family which focused on her grandfather, George du Maurier, the novelist and illustrator for Punch; The Glassblowers, a novel based upon the lives of her du Maurier ancestors; and Growing Pains, an autobiography that ignores nearly 50 years of her life in favour of the joyful and more romantic period of her youth. Daphne du Maurier can best be understood in terms of her remarkable and paradoxical family, the ghosts which haunted her life and fiction.

While contemporary writers were dealing critically with such subjects as the war, alienation, religion, poverty, Marxism, psychology and art, and experimenting with new techniques such as the stream of consciousness, du Maurier produced 'old-fashioned' novels with straightforward narratives that appealed to a popular audience's love or fantasy, adventure, sexuality and mystery. At an early age, she recognised that her readership was comprised principally of women, and she cultivated their loyal following through several decades by embodying their desires and dreams in her novels and short stories.

In some of her novels, however, she went beyond the technique of the formulaic romance to achieve a powerful psychological realism reflecting her intense feelings about her father, and to a lesser degree, her mother. This vision, which underlies Julius, Rebecca and The Parasites, is that of an author overwhelmed by the memory of her father's commanding presence. In Julius and The Parasites, for example, she introduces the image or a domineering but deadly father and the daring subject of incest.

In Rebecca, on the other hand, du Maurier fuses psychological realism with a sophisticated version of the Cinderella story. The nameless heroine has been saved from a life of drudgery by marrying a handsome, wealthy aristocrat, but unlike the Prince in Cinderella, Maxim de Winter is old enough to be the narrator's father. The narrator thus must do battle with The Other Woman - the dead Rebecca and her witch-like surrogate, Mrs Danvers - to win the love of her husband and father-figure. The fantasy of this novel is fulfilled when Maxim confesses to the narrator that he never loved Rebecca; indeed, he hated her, a confession that allows the narrator to emerge triumphantly from the Oedipal triangle.

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Average rating: 4.08 · 179,629 ratings · 11,095 reviews · 91 distinct works · Similar authors

	Rebecca 4.15 of 5 stars 4.15 avg rating — 143,519 ratings — published 1938 — 164 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Jamaica Inn 3.79 of 5 stars 3.79 avg rating — 7,592 ratings — published 1935 — 65 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	My Cousin Rachel 3.85 of 5 stars 3.85 avg rating — 6,415 ratings — published 1951 — 50 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Frenchman's Creek 3.87 of 5 stars 3.87 avg rating — 3,985 ratings — published 1941 — 48 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The House on the Strand 3.84 of 5 stars 3.84 avg rating — 3,187 ratings — published 1969 — 35 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Birds & Other Stories 4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 avg rating — 1,938 ratings — published 1952 — 14 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Scapegoat 3.87 of 5 stars 3.87 avg rating — 1,731 ratings — published 1957 — 33 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Don't Look Now 3.86 of 5 stars 3.86 avg rating — 2,093 ratings — published 1971 — 33 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The King's General 3.85 of 5 stars 3.85 avg rating — 1,208 ratings — published 1946 — 30 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Glass-Blowers 3.56 of 5 stars 3.56 avg rating — 821 ratings — published 1963 — 17 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Daphne du Maurier…

Quotes by Daphne du Maurier

“But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.”
― Daphne du Maurier

4,286 people liked it

“If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

tags: books, fiction

555 people liked it

“Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

tags: happiness

452 people liked it

See all Daphne du Maurier's quotes »

Polls

Please select the book you would most like to see featured as our next Convergent Read (beginning October 15th):

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

21 votes, 33.9%

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

15 votes, 24.2%

The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West

13 votes, 21.0%

Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier

12 votes, 19.4%

Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang

1 vote, 1.6%

62 total votes

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Daphne's Fans (1552)

Daphne du Maurier

Author profile

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Polls

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Videos

combine editions
Daphne du Maurier's Books