Daphne du Maurier

Daphne du Maurier, born May 13, 1907, was the second daughter of the famous actor and theatre manager-producer Sir Gerald du Maurier and granddaughter of George du Maurier, author of TRILBY and PETER IBBETSON. After being educated at home with her sisters and then in Paris, she began writing short stories and articles in 1928, and in 1931 her first novel, “The Loving Spirit,” was published. Two others followed. Her reputation was established with her frank biography of her father, “Gerald: A Portrait” (1934), and her Cornish novel, “Jamaica Inn” (1936). In 1938, “Rebecca” was published and du Maurier suddenly found herself one of the most popular authors of the day. The book went into thirty-nine English impressions in the next twenty years and has been translated into more than twenty languages. Du Maurier’s fourteen other novels, nearly all best-sellers, include: “Frenchman’s Creek” (1941), “Hungry Hill” (1943), “My Cousin Rachel” (1951), “Mary Anne” (1954), “The Scapegoat” (1957), “The Glass-Blowers” (1963), “The Flight of the Falcon” (1965), and “The House on the Strand” (1969). Besides her novels she published a number of volumes of short stories, including: “Come Wind, Come Weather” (1941), “Kiss Me Again, Stranger” (1952), “The Breaking Point” (1959), “Not After Midnight” (1971), “Don’t Look Now and Other Stories” (1971), “The Rendezvous and Other Stories” (1980), and two plays, THE YEARS BETWEEN (1945) and SEPTEMBER TIDE (1948). She also wrote an account of her relations in the last century, “The du Mauriers,” and a biography of Branwell Brontë, as well as “Vanishing Cornwall,” an eloquent elegy on the past of a country she loved so much. Her autobiography, “Growing Pains,” appeared in 1977 and “The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories” in 1981. Daphne du Maurier was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1969. She passed away in 1989 at her home in Cornwall.