Daphne du Maurier — A Profile of the Author of Rebecca
“ Daphne du Maurier is one of those writers who seem to soak herself into the very heart of what she is writing about…” Denys Val Baker
Daphne was not Cornish, but lived in the county for the best part of sixty years, where she wrote more than forty novels, works of non-fiction, plays, screenplays, such as Jamaica Inn (1936), Frenchman’s Creek (1941), My Cousin Rachel (1951), The Scapegoat (1957), The Flight of the Falcon (1965), and Rule Britannia (1972). She also wrote hundreds of short stories, with The Birds — filmed by Hitchcock — one of her most famous.
Dame Daphne was actually born in London in 1907, her father was the actor/manager Gerald (Hubert Edward Busson) du Maurier, and her grandfather the artist and writer, George (Louis Palmella Busson) du Maurier, who is perhaps now best known for his 1894 novel, Trilby, which introduced to the world the evil charmer and seducer Svengali. The novel later became a very successful stage play, influencing hugely Gaston Leroux’s novel, The Phantom of the Opera (1911), which was the source material for the musical of the same name. Trilby also had soaps, toothpastes, songs and dances named after it, and a rather famous felt hat.
Daphne du Maurier, who was related to Mary Anne Clarke, the mistress of the Duke of York — the second son of George III — was…
