Daphne du Maurier was an acclaimed English novelist, short story writer, and playwright, born in 1907 in London. She was born into a family with a rich artistic and historical background, being the middle of three daughters of prominent actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and actress Muriel, née Beaumont. Du Maurier's paternal grandfather was author and Punch cartoonist George du Maurier, and her mother was a maternal niece of journalist, author, and lecturer Comyns Beaumont. She and her sisters were indulged as children and grew up enjoying enormous freedom from financial and parental restraint.
Du Maurier's literary career began in her early twenties, after publishing her first novel, and her subsequent novels became bestsellers, earning her enormous wealth and fame. Many of her works, including "Rebecca," "Frenchman's Creek," "My Cousin Rachel," and "Jamaica Inn," have been successfully adapted into films. Alfred Hitchcock's film adaptations of her novels, such as "Rebecca" and "The Birds," made her one of the best-known authors in the world. Du Maurier's work is characterized by a moody and foreboding atmosphere, often incorporating elements of the paranormal, which became her trademark style.
Du Maurier's life resembles a fairy tale, having spent her youth sailing boats, traveling on the Continent with friends, and writing stories. She married a handsome soldier, Major (later Lieutenant-General Sir) Frederick Browning, and continued writing under her maiden name. Du Maurier's work was well-received by a popular audience, particularly women, as she recognized their desires and dreams in her novels and short stories. She was made a DBE in 1969 and died in 1989.
Du Maurier was obsessed with the past and intensively researched the lives of Francis and Anthony Bacon, the history of Cornwall, the Regency period, and nineteenth-century France and England. She was particularly interested in her own family history, which she chronicled in several works, including "Gerald: A Portrait," a biography of her father; "The du Mauriers," a study of her family which focused on her grandfather, George du Maurier, the novelist and illustrator for Punch; and "The Glassblowers," a novel based upon the lives of her du Maurier ancestors. Du Maurier's work is best understood in terms of her remarkable and paradoxical family, the ghosts which haunted her life and fiction.