Daphne du Maurier

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Daphne du Maurier bigraphy, stories - Generals

Daphne du Maurier : biography

13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989

Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning DBE ( 13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989) was an English author and playwright.

Many of her works have been adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca (which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1941) and Jamaica Inn and the short stories The Birds and Don’t Look Now. The first three were directed by Alfred Hitchcock, the latter by Nicolas Roeg.

Her grandfather was the artist and writer George du Maurier and her father the actor Gerald du Maurier. Her elder sister Angela also became a writer and her younger sister Jeanne was a painter.

Personal names, titles and honours

She was known as Daphne du Maurier from 1907 to 1932 when she became Mrs Frederick Browning while writing as Daphne du Maurier (1932–1946). She was titled Lady Browning; Daphne du Maurier (1946–1969). Later, on being created Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, she became Lady Browning; Dame Daphne du Maurier DBE (1969–1989).

When in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for June 1969 Daphne du Maurier was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, she accepted but never used the title. According to Margaret Forster, she told no one about the honour, so that even her children only learned of it 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."Margaret Forster, Daphne du Maurier, Chatto and Windus, 1993, p. 370, ISBN 0-7011-3699-5

Death

Du Maurier died aged 81 at her home in Cornwall, which had been the setting for many of her books. Her body was cremated and her ashes scattered at Kilmarth.Margaret Forster, ‘Du Maurier , Dame Daphne (1907–1989)’, rev., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004

Publications

Fiction

  • The Loving Spirit (1931)
  • I’ll Never Be Young Again (1932)
  • The Progress of Julius (1933) (later re-published as Julius)
  • Jamaica Inn (1936)
  • Rebecca (1938)
  • Rebecca (1940) (du Maurier’s stage adaptation of her novel)
  • Happy Christmas (1940) (short story)
  • Come Wind, Come Weather (1940) (short story collection)
  • Frenchman’s Creek (1941)
  • Hungry Hill (1943)
  • The Years Between (1945) (play)
  • The King’s General (1946)
  • September Tide (1948) (play)
  • The Parasites (1949)
  • My Cousin Rachel (1951)
  • The Apple Tree (1952) (short story collection, AKA Kiss Me Again, Stranger)
  • Mary Anne (1954)
  • The Scapegoat (1957)
  • Early Stories (1959) (short story collection, stories written between 1927–1930)
  • The Breaking Point (1959) (short story collection, AKA The Blue Lenses)
  • Castle Dor (1961) (with Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch)
  • The Birds and Other Stories (1963) (republication of The Apple Tree)
  • The Glass-Blowers (1963)
  • The Flight of the Falcon (1965)
  • The House on the Strand (1969)
  • Not After Midnight (1971) (short story collection, AKA Don’t Look Now)
  • Rule Britannia (1972)
  • The Rendezvous and Other Stories (1980) (short story collection)

Non-fiction

  • Gerald: A Portrait (1934)
  • The du Mauriers (1937)
  • The Young George du Maurier (1951)
  • The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë (1960)
  • Vanishing Cornwall (includes photographs by her son Christian, 1967)
  • Golden Lads: Sir Francis Bacon, Anthony Bacon and their Friends (1975)
  • The Winding Stair: Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall (1976)
  • Growing Pains – the Shaping of a Writer (a.k.a. Myself When Young – the Shaping of a Writer, 1977)
  • Enchanted Cornwall (1989)