Although du Maurier 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 they 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". Du Maurier spent much of her life in Cornwall, where most of her works are set. As her fame increased, she became more reclusive.[2]
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.[7]
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.
Personal life
Menabilly house in Fowey, which du Maurier leased in 1943. She restored it from a neglected state, and made it her home until 1969.
Flavia (b. 1937), who married Captain Alastair Tower. After they divorced, she married General Sir Peter Leng.
Christian (b. 1940), a photographer and filmmaker. He married Olive White (Miss Ireland 1961).
She was known as Daphne du Maurier from 1907 to 1932, when she married Frederick Browning. Still writing as Daphne du Maurier during her marriage, she was also known as Lady Browning after her husband was knighted in 1946.[8]
Biographers have claimed that du Maurier's marriage was at times somewhat chilly, and that she could be aloof and distant to her children, especially the girls, when immersed in her writing.[9][10] She has often been painted as a frostily private recluse who rarely mixed in society or gave interviews,[10] but many people remembered her as a warm and immensely funny person in private who was a welcoming hostess to guests at Menabilly,[11] the house that she had leased for many years, from the Rashleigh family in Cornwall.
An exception to her reticence to give interviews came after the release of the film A Bridge Too Far, based on a book by Cornelius Ryan, in which her late husband was portrayed in a less-than-flattering light. Incensed, she wrote to the national newspapers, decrying what she considered unforgivable treatment.[13]
She appeared as a castaway in the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs broadcast on 3 September 1977. Her chosen book was The Collected Works of Jane Austen, and her luxury was whisky and ginger ale.[14]
When she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1969,[1] she was titled Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, DBE, but she never used the title. According to her biographer Margaret Forster, she told no one about the honour, so that even her children learned of it only from the newspapers. "She thought of pleading illness for the investiture, until her children insisted it would be a great day for the older grandchildren. So she went through with it, though she slipped out quietly afterwards to avoid the attention of the press."[15]
Relationships
The Daphne du Maurier Companion, edited by Helen Taylor, includes Taylor's claims that du Maurier confessed to her in 1965 that she had had an incestuous relationship with her father and that he had been a violent alcoholic.[16] Du Maurier stated in her memoirs that because her father had wanted a son,[9] she became a tomboy, in an attempt to get the parental approval she would have had she been born a boy.
In correspondence that her family released to biographer Margaret Forster, du Maurier explained to a trusted few people that she felt her personality comprised two distinct people – the loving wife and mother side she showed to the world, and the lover side, a "decidedly male energy", hidden from virtually everyone, which was the power behind her artistic creativity. According to Forster's biography, du Maurier believed the "male energy" propelled her writing.[17]
After du Maurier's death in 1989, some writers speculated about her alleged intimate physical relationships with a number of women,[9] including Ellen Doubleday, the wife of her U.S. publisher Nelson Doubleday, and the actress Gertrude Lawrence, as detailed in the 2007 BBC Two film, Daphne.[10][a]The children of both du Maurier and Lawrence have objected strongly to the stories about the alleged relationship between their mothers.
Two years after Lawrence died, a biography of her written by her widower, Richard Aldrich, went into detail about a friendship between her and du Maurier that had begun in 1948 when Lawrence had accepted the lead role in du Maurier's new play September Tide.[20] Aldrich said that Lawrence had toured Britain in the play in 1948 and continued with it in London's West End theatre district through 1949, and that later du Maurier visited them at their home in the United States.[20] Aldrich made no mention of a possible same-sex relationship.[20]
Death
Du Maurier died from heart failure in her sleep on 19 April 1989, aged 81, at her home in Par, Cornwall,[3] which had been the setting for many of her books. Her body was cremated in private and without a memorial service (at her request)[21] and her ashes scattered off the cliffs around Kilmarth and Menabilly, Cornwall.[3][22]
Writing 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 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.[23] 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.[24]
Du Maurier was often categorised as a "romantic novelist", a term that she deplored,[25] 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.[11] 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."[26]
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.[citation needed] 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'."[28]
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".[29]
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.[30]
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.[31]
Film adaptations
Rebecca has been adapted for both stage and screen several times, most notably by Alfred Hitchcock in his 1940 film Rebecca. 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 in both 1952 and 2017. The Hitchcock film The Birds (1963) is based on a treatment of the short story of that name, 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.[citation needed]
Hitchcock's treatment of Jamaica Inn was disavowed by both director and author, due to a complete re-write of the ending to accommodate the ego of its star, Charles Laughton. Du Maurier also felt that Olivia de Havilland was wrongly cast as the anti-heroine of My Cousin Rachel (1952).[32]Frenchman's Creek fared better in a lavish Technicolor version released in 1944. Du Maurier later regretted her choice of Alec Guinness as the lead in the film of The Scapegoat, which she partly financed.[11]
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.[33]
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 and other readers 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.[34] 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.[35]
The controversy was examined in a 2002 article by Larry Rohter in The New York Times.[36] According to Nabuco's memoirs, when the Hitchcock film Rebecca was first shown in Brazil, United Artists wanted Nabuco to sign a document stating that the similarities were merely a coincidence but she refused.[37] Rohter quotes Nabuco's memoirs as saying,
When the film version of 'Rebecca' came to Brazil, the producers' lawyer sought out my lawyer to ask him that I sign a document admitting the possibility of there having been a mere coincidence. I would be compensated with a quantity described as 'of considerable value.' I did not consent, naturally.[36]
Rohter remarked: "Nabuco had translated her novel into French and sent it to a publisher in Paris, who she learned was also Ms. du Maurier's [publisher] only after Rebecca became a worldwide success. The novels have identical plots and even some identical episodes."[36]
"The Birds"
Author Frank Baker's second novel, The Birds, was published by Peter Davies in 1936. Baker stated that it bore some resemblance to The Terror by Arthur Machen (first published 1917).[38] When Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds was released in 1963, based on "The Birds" (1952) by du Maurier, Baker considered litigation against Universal Studios[39][40] but his legal counsel stated: "The treatment of the general idea of attacks by birds in the two works is as different as it could be."[41]
Du Maurier denied that she had ever read Baker's book. Some sources claim that Du Maurier was a reader for Davies in 1936,[42] but she was already a successful author by then, and spent most of 1936 in Alexandria with her family. [43]
Cultural references
Du Maurier's love of the outdoors and walking were written about in Annabel Abbs's book Windswept: Walking in the Footsteps of Remarkable Women (Two Roads, 2021) as she retraced the writer's walk along the Rhône river in France, accompanied by her Cornish neighbour and friend Clara Vyvyan.
Daphne du Maurier was one of five "Women of Achievement" selected for a set of British stamps issued in August 1996.[44]
English Heritage caused controversy in June 2008 by denying an application to commemorate her home in Hampstead with a Blue Plaque. In 2011 a plaque was mounted on Cannon Cottage in Well Street, Hampstead, put up by the Heath and Hampstead Society.[45]
In 2013, grandson Ned Browning released a collection of men's and women's watches based on characters from the novel Rebecca, under the brand name du Maurier Watches.[46]
In the 2014 novel The House at the End of Hope Street,[47] du Maurier is featured as one of the women who has lived in the titular house.[48]
The character of Bedelia Du Maurier in the television series Hannibal was named in part after du Maurier because its creator Bryan Fuller is a fan of Alfred Hitchcock, who had adapted three of du Maurier's books to film.[49]
Daphne du Maurier appears as a character in the short story "The Housekeeper" by Rose Tremain. The story imagines a lesbian affair between du Maurier and a Polish housekeeper, who is then fictionalised as Mrs Danvers in Rebecca.
The 2024 novel The Mischief Makers by Elisabeth Gifford is inspired by du Maurier's relationships with Barrie and the Llewelyn Davies brothers.[50]
The Apple Tree (1952); entitled Kiss Me Again, Stranger (1953) in the US, with two additional stories; later republished as The Birds and Other Stories
Early Stories (1959) (stories written between 1927 and 1930)[52]
Maroon beret – She was said to have chosen the colour which is now an international symbol of airborne forces; however, in a letter, kept by the British Airborne Assault Archive, she wrote that it was untrue.[55]
Notes
^Du Maurier's alleged affairs with Ellen Doubleday and Gertrude Lawrence were the subject of the 2007 BBC Two film, Daphne.[18][19]
^Bret, David (1 January 1998). Tallulah Bankhead: a scandalous life. London/Jersey City, NJ: Robson Books; Parkwest Publications. p. 34. ISBN1861051905. OCLC40157558.
^Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 13209). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.
^"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).
^"The Big Read", BBC (April 2003). Retrieved 18 October 2012.
^"Rebecca seria brasileira" [Rebecca would be Brazilian]. Os Filmes (in Portuguese). Archived from the original on 15 September 2007. Retrieved 26 October 2007.
^Baker, Frank (1968). I Follow But Myself. Peter Davies. p. 185.
^van, Praag, Menna (2014). The house at the end of Hope Street : a novel. New York. ISBN978-0143124948. OCLC852829959.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Dictionary of National Biography. London, Oxford University Press, 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).
Rance, Nicholas. "Not Like Men in Books, Murdering Women: Daphne du Maurier and the Infernal World of Popular Fiction". In Clive Bloom (ed.), Creepers: British Horror and Fantasy in the Twentieth Century. London and Boulder, CO: Pluto Press, 1993. pp. 86–98.
