Daphne Du Maurier Biography and latest books by Daphne Du Maurier

Daphne Du Maurier was an English fiction book writer, biographer, and playwright, who was known for her romantic suspense novels, generally set on the coast of Cornwall. Her best known work was Rebecca (1938). This novel was made into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940. The novel has been compared to Charlotte Brontë\'s Jane Eyre.

Daphne du Maurier was born in London into an aesthetically inclined family. She was the granddaughter of caricature artist George du Maurier, her mother, Muriel Beaumont, was an actress, and her father turned to writing.

Du Maurier was raised in a lively London household. She was a voracious reader, fascinated by the imaginary. Her uncle, a magazine editor, published one of her stories when Du Maurier was just a teenager. He also got a literary agent to work for her. Very aware that her father wanted a son instead of her, she grew up harboring the wish that she should have been a boy. However, she was her father\'s favorite, due to her literary skills. Incidentally, Du Maurier had a male narrator in several novels. Later in life she wrote in a letter, "And then the boy realised he had to grow up and not to be a boy any longer, so he turned into a girl and not an unattractive one at that, and the boy was locked in a box forever."

Du Maurier attended schools in London, France, and Paris. Her first book, The Loving Spirit, was followed by Jamaica Inn. She also wrote Frenchman\'s Creek, and My Cousin Rachel, which were again successfully filmed.

Du Maurier also got her short stories, plays, and biographies, published. Her biography of Francis Bacon, an English statesman in the 1500s and 1600s, is also popular. Du Maurier\'s autobiography, Growing Pains, was published when she turned 70. In the late 1950s, du Maurier began to take interest in the supernatural. And she wrote several stories, which explored fears and paranoid fantasies - The Blue Lenses and Don\'t Look Now. Du Maurier received in 1977 the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America.