Daphne Du Maurier

The idea for this famous story came to du Maurier one day when she was walking across to Menabilly Barton farm from the house. She saw a farmer busily ploughing a field whilst above him the seagulls were diving and wheeling. She developed an idea about the birds becoming hostile and attacking him. In her story, the birds become hostile after a harsh winter with little food -- first the seagulls, then birds of prey, and finally even small birds -- all turn against mankind. The nightmarish vision appealed to Hitchcock who turned it into the celebrated film.

ISBN: 9781844080878

Both a spellbinding love story and a superb evocation of Cornwall's mythic past, Castle Dor is a book with unique and fascinating origins. It began life as the unfinished last novel of Sir Arthur Quiller- Couch, the celebrated 'Q', and was passed by his daughter to Daphne du Maurier whose storytelling skills were perfectly suited to the task of completing the old master's tale. The result is this magical, compelling recreation of the legend of Tristan and Iseult, transplanted in time to the Cornwall of the last century. A chance encounter between the Breton onion-seller, Amyot Trestane, and the newly-wed Linnet Lewarne launches their tragic story, taking them in the fateful footsteps of the doomed lovers of Cornish legend ...

ISBN: 9781844080670

It is 1957. The author Daphne du Maurier, beautiful, famous, despairing as her marriage falls apart, finds herself haunted by Rebecca, the heroine of her most famous novel, written twenty years earlier. Resolving to write herself out of her misery, Daphne becomes passionately interested in Branwell, the reprobate brother of the Bronte sisters, and begins a correspondence with the enigmatic bibliophile Alex Symington as she researches a biography. But behind Symington's respectable scholarly surface is a slippery character with much to hide, and soon truth and fiction have become indistinguishable.In present-day London, a lonely young woman, newly married after a fleeting courtship with a man considerably older than her, struggles with her PhD thesis. Her husband, still seemingly in thrall to his brilliant, charismatic first wife, is frequently distant and mysterious, and she can't find a way to make this large, imposing house in Hampstead feel like her own. Retreating instead into the comfort of her library, she begins to become absorbed in a fifty-year-old literary mystery.

ISBN: 9780747587026

MARCH 2008

"Rebecca", published in 1938, brought its author instant international acclaim, capturing the popular imagination with its haunting atmosphere of suspense and mystery. But the more fame this and her other books encouraged, the more reclusive "Daphne du Maurier" became. Margaret Forster's award-winning biography could hardly be more worthy of its subject. Drawing on private letters and papers, and with the unflinching co-operation of Daphne du Maurier's family, Margaret Forster explores the secret drama of her life - the stifling relationship with her father, actor-manager Gerald du Maurier; her troubled marriage to war hero and royal aide, 'Boy' Browning; her wartime love affair; her passion for Cornwall and her deep friendships with the last of her father's actress loves, Gertrude Lawrence, and with an aristocratic American woman. Most significant of all, Margaret Forster ingeniously strips away the relaxed and charming facade to lay bare the true workings of a complex and emotional character whose passionate and often violent stories mirrored her own fantasy life more than anyone could ever have imagined.

ISBN: 9780099333319

Daphne du Maurier is one of Britain's best-loved authors, her writing capturing the imagination in a way that few have been able to equal. Rebecca, her most famous novel, was a huge success on first publication and brought du Maurier international fame. This enduring classic remains one of the nation's favourite books. In this celebration of Daphne du Maurier's life and achievements, today's leading writers, critics and academics discuss the novels, short stories and biographies that made her one of the most spellbinding and genre-defying authors of her generation. The film versions of her books are also explored, including Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca and The Birds and Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now. Featuring interviews with du Maurier's family and a long-lost short story by the author herself, this is the indispensable companion to her work. Contributors include Sarah Dunant, Sally Beauman, Margaret Forster, Antonia Fraser, Michael Holroyd, Lisa Jardine, Julie Myerson, Justine Picardie and Minette Walters

ISBN: 9781844082353

In this memoir, Flavia Leng paints a powerful portrait of her mother, Daphne du Maurier. She presents an account of an unusual childhood, and reveals du Maurier's deep attachment to Cornwall and her withdrawal from family and friends.

ISBN: 1840181907

John and Laura have come to Venice to try and escape the pain of their young daughter's death. But when they encounter two old women who claim to have second sight, they find that, instead of laying their ghosts to rest, they become caught up in a train of increasingly strange and violent events. The four other haunting, evocative stories in this volume also explore deep fears and longings, secrets and desires: a lonely teacher who investigates a mysterious American couple; a young woman confronting her father's past; a party of pilgrims who meet disaster in Jerusalem; and a scientist who harnesses the power of the mind to chilling effect.

ISBN: 9780141188379

When Daphne du Maurier wrote this book she was only thirty years old and had already established herself both as a biographer, with the acclaimed Gerald: A Portrait, and as a novelist. The Du Mauriers was written during a vintage period of her career, between two of her best-loved novels: Jamaica Inn and Rebecca. Her aim was to write her family biography 'so that it reads like a novel' and it was due to du Maurier's remarkable imaginative gifts that she was able to breathe life into the characters and depict with affection and wit the relatives she never knew, including her grandfather, the famous Victorian artist and Punch cartoonist - and creator of Trilby. 'Miss du Maurier creates on the grand scale; she runs through the generations, giving her family unity and reality ...a rich vein of huour and satire ...observation, sympathy, courage, a sense of the romantic, are here' Observer

ISBN: 9781844080649

As a young guide for Sunshine Tours, Armino Fabbio leads a pleasant, if humdrum life -- until he becomes circumstantially involved in the murder of an old peasant woman in Rome. The woman, he gradually comes to realise, was his family's beloved servant many years ago, in his native town of Ruffano. He returns to his birthplace, and once there, finds it is haunted by the phantom of his brother, Aldo, shot down in flames in '43. Over five hundred years before, the sinister Duke Claudio, known as The Falcon, lived his twisted, brutal life, preying on the people of Ruffano. But now it is the twentieth century, and the town seems to have forgotten its violent history. But have things really changed? The parallels between the past and present become ever more evident.

ISBN: 9781844080700

The Restoration Court knows Lady Dona St Columb to be ripe for any folly, any outrage that will alter the tedium of her days. But there is another, secret Dona who longs for a life of honest love -- and sweetness, even if it is spiced with danger. It is this Dona who flees the stews of London for remote Navron, looking for peace of mind in its solitary woods and hidden creeks. She finds there the passion her spirit craves -- in the love of a daring pirate hunted by all Cornwall, a Frenchman who, like Dona, would gamble his life for a moment's joy.

ISBN: 9781844080410

Exciting and tender, with magical descriptions of the Cornish coast and marvellously drawn portraits of Dora, her Frenchman and the Cornish gentry, Frenchman's Creek" is one of Daphne du Maurier's most popular novels.

ISBN: 9781844560790

Exciting and tender, with magical descriptions of the Cornish coast and marvellously drawn portraits of Dora, her Frenchman and the Cornish gentry, "Frenchman's Creek" is one of Daphne du Maurier's most popular novels.

ISBN: 9781840327847

Sir Gerald du Maurier was the most celebrated actor- manager of his day, knighted for his services to the theatre in 1922. Published within six months of her father's death, this frank biography was considered shocking by many of his admirers - but it was a huge success, winning Daphne du Maurier critical acclaim and launching her career. In Gerald: A Portrait, Daphne du Maurier captures the spirit and charm of the charismatic actor who played the original Captain Hook, amusingly recalling his eccentricities and his sense of humour, and sensitively portraying the darker side of his nature and his bouts of depression.

ISBN: 9781844080663

'Perhaps we shall not see each other again. I will write to you, though, and tell you, as best I can, the story of your family. A glass-blower, remember, breathes life into a vessel, giving it shape and form and sometimes beauty; but he can with that same breath, shatter and destroy it' Faithful to her word, Sophie Duval reveals to her long-lost nephew the tragic story of a family of master craftsmen in eighteenth-century France. The world of the glass-blowers has its own traditions, it's own language - and its own rules. 'If you marry into glass' Pierre Labbe warns his daughter, 'you will say goodbye to everything familiar, and enter a closed world'. But crashing into this world comes the violence and terror of the French Revolution against which, the family struggles to survive. The Glass Blowers is a remarkable achievement - an imaginative and exciting reworking of du Maurier's own family history.

ISBN: 9781844080656

Prior to the publication of this biography, the elusive Anthony Bacon was merely glimpsed in the shadow of his famous younger brother, Francis. A fascinating historical figure, Anthony Bacon was a contemporary of the brilliant band of gallants who clustered round the court of Elizabeth I, and he was closely connected with the Queen's favourite, the Earl of Essex. He also worked as an agent for Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen's spymaster, living in France where he became acquainted with Henri IV and the famous essayist Michel de Montaigne. It was in France that du Maurier discovered a secret that, if disclosed during Bacon's lifetime, could have put an end to his political career ...Du Maurier did much to shed light on matters that had long puzzled historians, and, as well as a consummate exercise in research, this biography is also a strange and fascinating tale.

BIOGRAPHY

ISBN: 9781844080731

Dick Young is lent a house in Cornwall by his friend Professor Magnus Lane. During his stay he agrees to serve as a guinea pig for a new drug that Magnus has discovered in his biochemical researches. The effect of this drug is to transport Dick from the house at Kilmarth to the Cornwall of the 14th century. There, in the manor of Tywardreath, the domain of Sir Henry Champernoune, he witnesses intrigue, adultery and murder. As his time travelling increases, Dick resents more and more the days he must spend in the modern world, longing ever more fervently to get back into his world of centuries before ...

ISBN: 9781844080427

As a bold and gifted child, Branwell Bronte's promise seemed boundless to the three adoring sisters over whom his rule was complete. But as an adult, the precocious flame of genius distorted and burned low. With neither the strength nor the resources to counter rejection, unable to sell his paintings or publish his books, Branwell became a spectre in the Bronte story, in pathetic contrast with the astonishing achievements of his sisters. Daphne du Maurier concentrates all her biographer's skill on the shadowy figure of Branwell Bronte, and no reader could fail to be intensely moved by Branwell's final retreat into laudanum, alcohol - and death

ISBN: 9781844080755

On a bitter November evening, young Mary Yellan journeys across the rainswept moors to Jamaica Inn in honour of her mother's dying request. When she arrives, the warning of the coachman begins to echo in her memory, for her aunt Patience cowers before hulking Uncle Joss Merlyn. Terrified of the inn's brooding power, Mary gradually finds herself ensnared in the dark schemes being enacted behind its crumbling walls -- and tempted to love a man she dares not trust.

ISBN: 9781844080397

Mary Yellan, recently orphaned, goes to live with her aunt at Jamaica Inn - stark and forbidding and standing alone on Bodmin Moor, its very walls tainted with corruption. This is a classic and enthralling story of smuggling and Cornish secrets and Mary who must observe it all alone.

ISBN: 9781844560783

Mary Yellan, recently orphaned, goes to live with her aunt at Jamaica Inn - stark and forbidding and standing alone on Bodmin Moor, its very walls tainted with corruption. This is a classic and enthralling story of smuggling and Cornish secrets and Mary who must observe it all alone.

ISBN: 9781840327830

Julius Levy sacrifices everything to a ruthless ambition. After adventures in the Franco-Prussian war and in Algiers he reaches England, where his dreams come true with a swiftness that would have frightened a man less sure of his destiny. As Julius claws his way to wealth, he cares for no one -- until Gabriel is born. The dark passions she inspires in her father will eventually destroy them both ...

ISBN: 9781844080687

Inspired by a grisly discovery in the nineteenth century, The King's General was the first of du Maurier's novels to be written at Menabilly, the model for Manderley in Rebecca. Set in the seventeenth century, it tells the story of a country and a family riven by war, and features one of fiction's most original heroines. Honor Harris is only eighteen when she first meets Richard Grenvile, proud, reckless - and utterly captivating. But following a riding accident, Honor must reconcile herself to a life alone. As Richard rises through the ranks of the army, marries and makes enemies, Honor remains true to him, and finally discovers the secret of Menabilly.

ISBN: 9781844080892

Cornwall, 1900s. Plyn Boat Yard is a hive of activity, and Janet Coombe longs to share in the excitement of seafaring: to travel, to have adventures, to know freedom. But constrained by the times, instead she marries her cousin Thomas, a boat builder, and settles down to raise a family. Janet's loving spirit - the passionate yearning for adventure and for love - is passed down to her son, and through him to his children's children. As generations of the family struggle against hardship and loss, their intricately plotted history is set against the greater backdrop of war and social change in Britain. Her debut novel, The Loving Spirit established du Maurier's reputation and style with an inimitable blend of romance, history and adventure.

ISBN: 9781844080939

In Regency London, the only way for a woman to succeed is to beat men at their own game. So when Mary Anne Clarke seeks an escape from her squalid surroundings in Bowling Inn Alley, she ventures first into the scurrilous world of the pamphleteers. Her personal charms are such, however, that before long she comes to the notice of the Duke of York. With her taste for luxury and power, Mary Anne, now a royal mistress, must aim higher. Her lofty connections allow her to establish a thriving trade in military commissions, provoking a scandal that rocks the government - and brings personal disgrace. A vivid portrait of overweening ambition, MARY ANNE is set during the Napoleonic Wars and based on du Maurier's own great-great- grandmother.

ISBN: 9781844080885

I threw the piece of paper on the fire. She saw it burn ...Orphaned at an early age, Philip Ashley is raised by his benevolent older cousin, Ambrose. Resolutely single, Ambrose delights in Philip as his heir, a man who will love his grand home as much as he does himself. But the cosy world the two construct is shattered when Ambrose sets off on a trip to Florence. There he falls in love and marries - and there he dies suddenly. In almost no time at all, the new widow - Philip's cousin Rachel - turns up in England. Despite himself, Philip is drawn to this beautiful, sophisticated, mysterious woman like a moth to the flame. And yet ...might she have had a hand in Ambrose's death?

ISBN: 9781844080403

Both her novels and her non-fiction reveal Daphne du Maurier's overwhelming desire to explore her family's history. In Myself When Young, based on diaries that she kept from 1920-1932, the most famous du Maurier probes her own past, beginning with her earliest memories and encompassing the publication of her first book and her subsequent marriage. Here, the writer is open and sometimes painfully honest about the difficult relationship with her father; her education in Paris; early love affairs; her antipathy towards London life and the theatre; her intense love for Cornwall and her desperate ambition to succeed as a writer. The resulting portrait is of a captivating and complex character.

ISBN: 9781844080960

COVER PRICE £9.99

ISBN: 9781861051776

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again ...Working as a lady's companion, the heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Life begins to look very bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. She accepts, but whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to the ominous and brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding Mrs Danvers ...Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the Other Woman. An international bestseller that has never gone out of print, Rebecca is the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love and the struggle to find her identity.

ISBN: 9781844080380

"Rebecca" is widely regarded as Daphne du Maurier's finest novel. It tells the story of Manderley - an exquisite house with gardens down to the sea, its owner Max de Winter and his new young wife ...and of course Rebecca.

ISBN: 9781840327786

Daphne du Maurier's haunting classic, read by Emilia Fox Rebecca is widely regarded as Daphne du Maurier's finest novel. It tells the story of Manderley - an exquisite house with gardens down to the sea, its owner Max de Winter and his new young wife...and of course Rebecca.

ISBN: 9781844560387

'This book of occasional pieces from Daphne du Maurier's workshop is good to have: it is something of a continuation of her autobiography MYSELF WHEN YOUNG. The title piece is the remarkable Notebook she kept when REBECCA was forming itself in her mind -- the book that made her a worldwide bestseller and conquered both stage and films and ...television. The other pieces are mainly autobiographical but have no less variety than charm. Her devoted readers will not be disappointed'

ISBN: 9781844080908

On the twentieth anniversary of the death of Rebecca, the hauntingly beautiful first wife of Maxim de Winter, family friend Colonel Julyan receives an anonymous parcel. It contains a black notebook with two handwritten words on the title page -- Rebecca's Tale -- and two pictures: a photograph of Rebecca as a young child and a postcard of Manderley. Rebecca once asked Julyan to ensure she was buried in the churchyard facing the sea: if she ended up in the de Winter crypt, she warned, she'd come back to haunt him. Now, it seems, she has finally kept her promise. Julyan's conscience has never been clear over the official version of Rebecca's death. Was Rebecca the manipulative, promiscuous femme fatale her husband claimed. Or the gothic heroine of tragic proportions that others had suggested. The official story, the 'truth', has only had Maxim's version of events to consider. But all that is about to change . . .

ISBN: 9780751533132

On the 20th anniversary of the death of Rebecca, the first wife of Maxim de Winter, family friend Colonel Julyan receives an anonymous parcel containing a notebook - marked "Rebecca's Tale" - and two pictures. Has she kept her word to haunt him for ending up in the de Winter crypt?

COVER PRICE £16.99

ISBN: 9780751532289

The stories in this collection, some written before du Maurier published her first novel, reflect many human emotions: romance, disenchantment, fantasy, nostalgia, ambition, irony, the longing for adventure. Each of them is based on something observed, something overheard, and all will provide pleasure for every mood.

ISBN: 9781844080717

'It is rather awful, Emma thought as she walked across the fields down to the farm, how this business is leading us all into subterfuge and deception, and we can't really tell who is friend and who is enemy ...' Emma wakes up one morning to an apocalyptic world. The cosy existence she shares with her grandmother, a famous retired actress, has been shattered: there's no post, no telephone, no radio - and an American warship sits in the harbour. As the two women piece together clues about the 'friendly' military occupation on their doorstep, family, friends and neighbours gather round to protect their heritage. In this chilling novel of the future, Daphne du Maurier explores the implications of a political, economic and military alliance between Britain and the United States.

ISBN: 9781844080632

By chance, two men - one English, the other French - meet in a provincial railway station. Their physical resemblance is uncanny, and they spend the next few hours talking and drinking - until at last John, the Englishman, falls into a drunken stupour. It's to be his last carefree moment, for when he wakes, his French companion has stolen his identity and disappeared. So John steps into the Frenchman's shoes, and faces a variety of perplexing roles - as owner of a chateau, director of a failing business, head of a fractious family, and master of nothing. Gripping and complex, The Scapegoat is a masterful exploration of doubling and identity, and of the dark side of the self.

ISBN: 9781844080977

There was a smell in the air of tar and rope and rusted chain, a smell of tidal water. Down harbour, around the point, was the open sea. Here was the freedom I desired, long sought-for, not yet known. Freedom to write, to walk, to wander, freedom to climb hills, to pull a boat, to be alone ...I for this, and this for me.' Daphne du Maurier lived in Cornwall for most of her life. Its rugged coastline, wild terrain and tumultuous weather inspired her imagination, and many of her works are set there, including Rebecca, Jamaica Inn and Frenchman's Creek. In Vanishing Cornwall she celebrates the land she loved, exploring its legends, its history and its people, eloquently making a powerful plea for Cornwall's preservation.

ISBN: 9781844083947

Many accounts of the life of Francis Bacon have been written for scholars. But du Maurier's aim in this biography was to illuminate the many facets of Bacon's remarkable personality for the common reader. To her book she brought the same gifts of imagination and perception that made her earlier biography, Golden Lads, so immensely readable, siklfully threading into her narrative extracts from contemporary documents and from Bacon's own writings, and setting her account of his life within a vivid contemporary framework. This is truly history made alive.

ISBN: 9781844080748