du Maurier, Dame Daphne

The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature | 2003 | 700+ words | Copyright

du Maurier, Dame Daphne (1907–89), novelist, born in London, the daughter of actor-manager Gerald and granddaughter of George du Maurier. It was not until her family bought a second home in Cornwall that she escaped the social life she hated. Living alone there through the winter of 1929–30 she produced her first novel, The Loving Spirit (1931), which was an immediate success. V. Gollancz, who published her frank memoir of her father (Gerald, 1934), encouraged her to develop her powerful narrative skill and evocation of atmosphere, and the result was Jamaica Inn (1936). Married in 1932 to Major Frederick Browning, she was obliged to go abroad with him when he was posted to Egypt, where she became desperately homesick: this unhappy period produced Rebecca (1938), a study in jealousy based on her own feelings towards a former fiancée of her husband's. She wrote ten more novels, two plays, several collections of short stories, and three biographies, but Rebecca remained her finest work, ensuring her lasting fame even though it overshadowed the rest of her work.

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MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "du Maurier, Dame Daphne." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 29 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "du Maurier, Dame Daphne." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. (May 29, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-duMaurierDameDaphne.html

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "du Maurier, Dame Daphne." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Retrieved May 29, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-duMaurierDameDaphne.html

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