Novels, short stories, and biographies Her family connections helped her establish her literary career, and she published some of her early work in her great-uncle Comyns Beaumont's
Bystander magazine. Her first novel,
The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931. The
Gothic novel
Rebecca (1938) was du Maurier's most successful work. It was an immediate hit, selling nearly 3 million copies between 1938 and 1965. The novel has never gone out of print. In the United States, du Maurier won the
National Book Award for favourite novel of 1938, voted by members of the
American Booksellers Association. In the UK, it was listed at number 14 of the "nation's best-loved novel"s on the
BBC's 2003 survey
The Big Read. Other significant works include
Jamaica Inn, ''
Frenchman's Creek, Hungry Hill, My Cousin Rachel, The Scapegoat, The House on the Strand, and The King's General''. The last is set in Cornwall during the
English Civil War, and is written from the
Royalist perspective. Du Maurier was often categorised as a "romantic novelist", a term that she deplored, given that her novels rarely have a happy ending, and often have sinister overtones and shadows of the paranormal. In this light, she has more in common with the "
sensation novels" of
Wilkie Collins and others, which she admired. Du Maurier's novel
Mary Anne (1954) is a fictionalised account of her great-great-grandmother,
Mary Anne Clarke née Thompson (1776–1852), who, from 1803 to 1808, was mistress of
Frederick Augustus, Duke of York and Albany (1763–1827). He was the "
Grand Old Duke of York" of the nursery rhyme, a son of King
George III, and brother of King
George IV and King
William IV. The central character of her last novel,
Rule Britannia, is an aging actress, thought to be based on
Gladys Cooper (to whom it is dedicated). Du Maurier's short stories are darker: "
The Birds", "
Don't Look Now", "The Apple Tree", and "The Blue Lenses" are finely crafted tales of terror that shocked and surprised her audience in equal measure. As her
biographer Margaret Forster wrote, "She satisfied all the questionable criteria of popular fiction, and yet satisfied too the exacting requirements of 'real literature'." The discovery, in 2011, of a collection of du Maurier's forgotten short stories, written when the author was 21, provides some insight into her mature style. One of them, "The Doll", concerns a young woman's obsession with a mechanical male sex doll; it has been deemed by du Maurier's son Kit Browning to be "quite ahead of its time". She also wrote non-fiction, including several biographies such as
Gerald, her father's biography.
The Glass-Blowers traces her French
Huguenot ancestry and vividly depicts the
French Revolution.
The du Mauriers traces the family's move from France to England in the 19th century.
The House on the Strand (1969) combines elements of "mental time-travel", a tragic love affair in 14th-century Cornwall, and the dangers of using mind-altering drugs. Her final book,
Rule Britannia (1972), was not well-received, her biographer, Margaret Forster, considering it to be the author's poorest novel.
Film adaptations Rebecca has been adapted for both stage and screen several times, most notably by
Alfred Hitchcock in his 1940 film
Rebecca. Several of du Maurier's other novels have also been adapted for the screen, including
Jamaica Inn, ''
Frenchman's Creek, Hungry Hill, and My Cousin Rachel
in both 1952 and 2017. The Hitchcock film The Birds (1963) is based on a treatment of the short story of that name, as is the film Don't Look Now'' (1973). Of the films, du Maurier often complained that the only ones she liked were Hitchcock's
Rebecca and
Nicolas Roeg's ''Don't Look Now''. Hitchcock's treatment of
Jamaica Inn was disavowed by both director and author, due to a complete re-write of the ending to accommodate the ego of its star,
Charles Laughton. Du Maurier also felt that
Olivia de Havilland was wrongly cast as the anti-heroine of
My Cousin Rachel (1952). ''
Frenchman's Creek fared better in a lavish Technicolor version released in 1944. Du Maurier later regretted her choice of Alec Guinness as the lead in the film of The Scapegoat'', which she partly financed. Her third play,
September Tide, portrays a middle-aged woman whose
bohemian artist son-in-law falls in love with her. Again directed by Irene Hentschel, it opened at the
Aldwych Theatre on 15 December 1948 with
Gertrude Lawrence as Stella. It closed in August 1949 after 267 performances.
Accusations of plagiarism Two authors accused Du Maurier of plagiarism, but were unable to prove their claims.
Rebecca Shortly after
Rebecca was published in
Brazil, critic
Álvaro Lins pointed out many resemblances to the 1934 book,
A Sucessora (The Successor), by Brazilian writer
Carolina Nabuco. According to Nabuco and her editor, not only the main plot, but also situations and entire dialogues had been copied. Du Maurier denied having copied Nabuco's book, as did her publisher, pointing out that the plot elements said to have been plagiarised were quite common. The controversy was examined in a 2002 article by
Larry Rohter in
The New York Times. According to Nabuco's memoirs, when the Hitchcock film
Rebecca was first shown in Brazil,
United Artists wanted Nabuco to sign a document stating that the similarities were merely a coincidence but she refused. Rohter quotes Nabuco's memoirs as saying, When the film version of 'Rebecca' came to Brazil, the producers' lawyer sought out my lawyer to ask him that I sign a document admitting the possibility of there having been a mere coincidence. I would be compensated with a quantity described as 'of considerable value.' I did not consent, naturally. According to another version, she submitted the English translation directly to a British publisher. As with her French translation, Nabuco's English translation has never been published. Depending on who is speculating, du Maurier was supposedly given access to the English manuscript,
"The Birds" Author
Frank Baker's second novel,
The Birds, was published by
Peter Davies, du Maurier's first cousin, in 1936. Baker stated that it bore some resemblance to
The Terror by
Arthur Machen (first published 1917). When
Alfred Hitchcock's
The Birds was released in 1963, based on "
The Birds" (1952) by du Maurier, Baker considered litigation against
Universal Studios but his legal counsel stated: "The treatment of the general idea of attacks by birds in the two works is as different as it could be." Du Maurier denied that she had ever read Baker's book. One source claims that Du Maurier was a reader for Davies in 1936, but she was already a successful author by then, and spent most of 1936 in Alexandria with her family. ==Cultural references==