Her Fiction Took Flight Before and After ‘The Birds’

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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, 17th-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 20th to 14th 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.

68 thoughts on “Her Fiction Took Flight Before and After ‘The Birds’”

  2. Hi Dave, how exciting October it is, with spooky things. But wow, this is almost all about the wonderful, wonderful Daphne du Maurier, she was amazing, wasn’t she. All those books and more, although I didn’t know some of those things. So thanks for adding those as well – that’s excellent. Rebecca must always be the best, I think, with Mrs Danvers as well, such a strange woman. There’s just a tiny note about her, Danvers. As you know, in Jasper Fforde’s The Well of Lost Plots, there are rather a lot of Mrs Danvers in that book – they had been cloned you see… odd but true(ish).

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  3. My thoughts after reading this is that I need to check out some of Daphne du Maurier’s books. I am familiar with most of the authors you mentioned at the outset, but not her. That’s an oversight I need to take care of. Thanks!

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    • Thank you, Ada! “Jamaica Inn” was indeed a suspenseful page-turner — and kind of nuts, too; du Maurier’s writing definitely “matured” after that. I wasn’t fond of the female protagonist’s decision at the end of “Jamaica Inn,” but…

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  5. Hi Dave,

    I read “Rebecca” some years ago and found the main character somewhat ho hum until as you mentioned she develops some determination and self assurance and the novel becomes something completely different which I found unputdownable.

    Based on that alone, I decided to buy and read all of du Maurier’s books in hard copy format which is something that I almost never do. Starting with her first novel “The Loving Spirit” I now have a collection of 5 novels which have all been at least pretty good. The most recent – “Jamaica Inn” – had me enthralled from page 1. I even quite enjoyed du Maurier’s non-fiction “Gerald” about her father’s life in the theatre. Next on my list is a re-read of “Rebecca” which I CANNOT wait to get to.

    I have also read “Don’t Look Now” from her short fiction pile and maybe one or two others? Unbelievably, I don’t think I’ve read “The Birds”.

    Thanks for this look into a favourite author of mine. I’m so glad to see other people feel the same way ❤

    Sue

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    • Thank you, Sue! You’re quite a du Maurier reader/collector! Including her very first novel, which is not well-known. Yes, the (unnamed) second wife in “Rebecca” does get more interesting as the novel goes on; of course, she had an excuse for being so timid at first — very young, very inexperienced, not used to great wealth, and getting psychologically bullied by Mrs. Danvers.

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  8. I think I read all her books in my late teens including the King’s General. I remember our library had them on a shelf and the covers were yellow and numbered, so you could see at a glance how many she’d written and go to the next number once you’d finished a book.

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      • It’s an ok book. I reread it a few years back. I do that every so often re books. It’s quite interesting to do that in that there’s books you don’t think were as great as you once did and others you still love or love even more. Re the numbers that was a great idea of the actual publisher of her books at that time to do that. The covers only had lettering and the numbers on them. No images. But my goodness it made them mysterious and if you loved the first one you picked up you knew exactly how many were left to read. I had also forgotten she wrote Don’t Look Now. I liked that one and I lent it to someone and never got it back,which why I had forgotten.

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        • Sounds like “The King’s General” wasn’t one of her best, Shehanne, but not-best du Maurier can still be pretty good. It IS interesting to see how we’ll react to a book when we reread it — whether we’ll like it more, less, or about the same.

          Ah, the publisher was responsible for that numbering system. Smart!

          Sorry you never got back “Don’t Look Now.” 😦

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    • Thank you, Dingenom! I appreciate your kind words about the post. 🙂 “Rebecca” is the only du Maurier work I’ve read twice, but she’s definitely a re-readable author! (And the concluding premise of her “Don’t Look Now” short story was such a jaw-dropping tour de force that I reread the final paragraph several times.)

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  12. There’s a great deal I don’t know about Daphne du Maurier, Dave, from what you’ve said here. I read ‘Rebecca’ a very long time ago, and could do with a re-read. I loved ‘Frenchman’s Creek’ and read it several times, and I’ve also read ‘The Birds’. I’ve seen film versions of all three, but I’ve never read ‘Jamaica Inn’ or any of the others you mention. Obviously my du Maurier reading could do with a brush-up. I did send the main characters in one of my own books to a slightly-creepy house that echoed Manderley for the denoument and Big Reveal; so she had some influence on me, which I’m glad about. Thanks for an interesting post, and have a good week. 🙂

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  14. I like time-travel books, and I never knew Daphne du Maurier wrote one; I’m going to buy it.

    I’m a fan of a mystery writer named Nicola Upson whose detective is a fictionalized version of a real person, Josephine Tey, an outstanding mystery writer (and well-known playwright of her day), whose books were written between 1929 and 1952 (I love them all, but I recommend starting with BRAT FARRAR if you want to read one.) Anyway, Upson’s 2023 book SHOT WITH CRIMSON is about Hitchcock’s filming of “Rebecca” and includes a scene or two with a fictional version of a young du Maurier.

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    • Thank you, Kim! For some odd reason, “The House on the Strand” was the first Daphne du Maurier novel I read after “Rebecca,” so I was aware that she tried the time-travel genre. But, yes, it’s kind of surprising. And I share your love of time-travel novels!

      I appreciate the Nicola Upson recommendation! I see that her first Josephine Tey book was “An Expert on Murder,” and the premise of the later “Shot with Crimson” sounds amazing! The one Tey novel I’ve read is “A Daughter of Time,” which I thought was quite impressive.

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  15. Fantastic analysis, Dave.
    It’s truly difficult to pigeonhole du Maurier, and that’s precisely what makes her brilliant. She manages to blend literary fiction with an unsettling atmosphere like no one else. The housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, still gives me the creeps! Thanks a lot!

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    • Thank you, volatilemuse! I’ve seen Judith Anderson’s creepy portrayal of Mrs. Danvers in the 1940 Hitchcock movie, but hadn’t been aware of the 1979 miniseries until seeing your comment. Just watched a clip that included Anna Massey as Mrs. Danvers; she is indeed great in that role!

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  17. Wait! What? How have I missed this… du Maurier also authored a time-travel novel??? The House on the Strand? Oh my gosh. Adding to my list. And I just noticed Darlene’s praise in an earlier comment. So exciting! 💝💝💝

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  19. The first book of her’s a read was The House on the Strand and I was hooked. I’ve always loved time travel and that book was so well done. I also read Jamaica Inn, and saw the inn she based the story on when visiting Cornwall.

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    • Thank you, Darlene! “The House on the Strand” is definitely an underrated time-travel classic. I’m also a big fan of that genre. 🙂 Great that you got to see the inspiration for the notorious “Jamaica Inn” inn!

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