Daphne du Maurier

Daphne du Maurier was a British novelist and short story writer, born in London on 13 May 1907 into a famously artistic family. Her father was the actor-manager Gerald du Maurier, and her grandfather was the writer and illustrator George du Maurier. She spent much of her adult life in Cornwall, which gave her the wild coastal settings that mark her best-known work. Her fiction mixes romance, suspense and the gothic, often turning on jealousy, secrets and uneasy marriages. She also wrote historical novels, biographies, plays and short stories, and several of her works were adapted for the screen, notably by Alfred Hitchcock. Critics once treated her as a popular entertainer, but her skill at building atmosphere and psychological tension has earned lasting respect. She died on 19 April 1989, and her books remain widely read.