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The Washington Post (20/Apr/1989) - Novelist Daphne du Maurier, Author of 'Rebecca,' Dies

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Novelist Daphne du Maurier, Author of 'Rebecca,' Dies

Daphne du Maurier, 81, a novelist and short-story writer whose tales of romance, mystery, suspense and intrigue captivated millions of readers all over the world, died in her sleep yesterday at her home in Cornwall, in the southwest of England. The cause of death was not reported.

Miss du Maurier was best known as the author of "Rebecca," a 1938 best-selling novel that later became a movie classic, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, it won an Academy Award for the best motion picture of 1940.

She also wrote "The Birds," "My Cousin Rachel," "Jamaica Inn" and "Frenchman's Creek," all of which also were made into successful motion pictures.

A gifted storyteller with a sense of the uncanny, the supernatural and the eerie, Miss du Maurier wrote 13 novels, many of them set along the wild coast of Cornwall, where she lived most of her life. She also wrote family histories, two plays and an autobiographical account of her development as a young writer. All of her novels became best-sellers, and seven were made into motion pictures.

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again," the opening sentence in "Rebecca," became one of the most recognizable in 20th century fiction. There were 42 printings of the novel, and it sold more than 1 million copies in hardcover. A new edition appeared in 1980.

It was a psychological drama about the arrival of a second wife in a new husband's home, an unraveling mystery about the death of the first wife, the resentment and hostility of a housekeeper toward the second wife, and a tormented and guilt-ridden husband. The story ends with the destruction by fire of the family mansion, Manderley.

Born in London, Miss du Maurier was the daughter of Sir Gerald du Maurier, an eccentric actor and theater manager. Her grandfather was George du Maurier, a famous Victorian cartoonist and author, and her great-great-grandmother, on whose life she based a novel, was Mary Anne Clarke, who gained notoriety in the early 19th century as the mistress of the Duke of York, the British military commander.

She was educated by private tutors in London and Paris, but as a young woman she became uncomfortable in London society and turned to writing while living by herself in her family's remote country home in Cornwall. After some of her short stories were published when she was 21, Miss du Maurier took her publisher's suggestion that she try a novel, and in 1931 wrote "The Loving Spirit," a romantic family chronicle.

That novel drew critical acclaim and caught the attention of a young major in the Grenadier Guards, Frederick A.M. Browning, who resolved after reading it to meet the author. He did, and a few months later they were married. Like the couple in Miss du Maurier's novel, they left for their honeymoon on a boat.

Browning would later command British airborne soldiers during World War II, then serve as an aide to Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. He died in 1965.

For much of her writing career, Miss du Maurier lived in an ancient manor house on the coast of Cornwall called Menabilly, which became the inspiration for Manderley in "Rebecca." The mansion was said to have been gutted by the troops of Oliver Cromwell in the 17th century, and according to legend, an English cavalier had been bricked up alive in one of the building's gray stone buttresses.

Miss du Maurier did most of her writing in a gardener's hut on the estate where, she said, "I'd sit for days on end, chain-smoking, chewing mints and tapping away at my typewriter."

While widely acclaimed as a superb storyteller, Miss du Maurier was sometimes faulted by critics who contended that her novels were overly melodramatic with too little character development and too much similarity of plots. Many said her later works did not live up to the standards of "Rebecca."

In 1969 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. That year, she left Menabilly and had lived since then in the village of Par.

Survivors include a son and two daughters.

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