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.
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.
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. Her elder sister, Angela du Maurier, became an actress and later also a writer, and her younger sister Jeanne du Maurier was a painter. 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.
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. 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.
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, 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. 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."
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.