Daphne du Maurier

It’s Halloween month, and thoughts turn to writers skilled at creating scary, spooky, suspenseful fiction.

Those authors who come to mind include Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, and Shirley Jackson, among others. But what about Daphne du Maurier?

Well…it’s complicated. A number of du Maurier’s novels and short stories indeed have chilling and sinister elements, but some of her books do not. One could say du Maurier was more an author of literary fiction than of Gothic horror fiction, though she of course excelled at both and could effectively combine the two. Let’s take a look at this British author’s stellar writing career after a brief detour into her interesting family lineage.

The 1907-born du Maurier’s mother Muriel was an actress and her father Gerald an actor/stage manager. Daphne’s grandfather George was a cartoonist and writer – including authoring the novel Trilby whose Svengali character had a name that would live on in language as an evil person who manipulates and controls others.

Daphne’s first novel to achieve wide renown was the potboiler Jamaica Inn (1936), which – along with Rebecca (1938) and her story “The Birds” (1952) – would cement the writer’s eerie bona fides by being turned into Alfred Hitchcock movies.

Rebecca is of course du Maurier’s most famous novel – and a classic. As many of you know, it stars the unnamed young bride of Maximilian de Winter, whose first wife (the title character) died under mysterious circumstances in the water bordering their Manderley estate. The book also features creepy housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, who’s intensely loyal to the late Rebecca and threateningly hostile to the new bride.

While the second Mrs. de Winter is initially shy and timid, her eventual turn into a more determined and self-assured person is an example of how du Maurier created a number of strong, feminist women in her fiction.

One of them is Frenchman’s Creek protagonist Dona – a married, upper-class, 17^th-century English mother who daringly has an affair with a French pirate and even becomes a pirate herself for a while. In a 1941 novel of adventure and general fiction that’s not in the Gothic horror genre.

Among other du Maurier novels with little or no hint of the spooky and supernatural were 1949’s The Parasites (about an eccentric theater family) and 1954’s Mary Anne (a fictionalized look at du Maurier’s brainy and ambitious great-great grandmother navigating initial poverty and a patriarchal society).

In-between was 1951’s My Cousin Rachel, a mystery/romance with haunting elements.

The author was still going strong in 1969, when her time-travel novel The House on the Strand was published. The way du Maurier moves her protagonist repeatedly from the 20^th to 14^th century, and the eye-opening experiences he has in the 1300s, make that book one of the cleverer examples of the time-travel genre also explored by H.G. Wells, Mark Twain, Octavia Butler, Diana Gabaldon, Jack Finney, Edward Bellamy, Audrey Niffenegger, and others.

Short stories were a du Maurier strength, too. “The Birds,” of course, but also her later-career 1971 collection featuring “Don’t Look Now” and other memorable tales; a collection I just read for the first time. The “Don’t Look Now” story’s shocking manipulation-of-time conclusion is a wondrous thing to behold.

Among the works by du Maurier – who died in 1989 – that I haven’t read are a few of her other novels as well as her plays and nonfiction.

Any thoughts on this post and du Maurier’s writing?

Misty the cat says: “When that chipmunk writes its memoir, I can narrate the audiobook.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂 (Not my voice. 🙂 )

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece – which includes a movie theme — is here.