Daphne du Maurier, Haunted Heiress

Auerbach examines the writer of depth and recklessness now largely known only as the author of Rebecca, looking at the way her sharp-edged fiction, with its brutal and often perverse family relationships, has been softened in film adaptations of her work. She reads both du Maurier's life in her writings, and the sensibility of a vanished class and time that haunts the fringes of our own age.

Nina Auerbach examines both the life of Daphne du Maurier as it is revealed in her writings and the sensibility of a vanished class and a time now gone that haunts the fringes of our own age.

Library Journal

In an engaging prose style, Auerbach, a scholar of Victorian and feminist studies, reveals her literary passion for du Maurier, which started at age 12 while she was attending summer camp. She devotes a chapter to du Maurier's family--her grandfather, novelist George du Maurier, and her father, actor--manager Gerald du Maurier-and how these strong men were reflected in her fiction, turning her novels and stories into a reaction against her male heritage. Auerbach also examines film versions of du Maurier's work, revealing how Hitchcock and others romanticized the dark vision of Rebecca and other fictions. While the critic's emphasis on the gloomy side of du Maurier may turn off some potential readers, she does succeed in her aim of rescuing her chosen author from the label of "romantic writer." For undergraduate and large public library collections.--Morris Hounion, New York City Technical Coll., Brooklyn Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Nina Auerbach is John Welsh Centennial Professor of History and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of numerous books, including Ellen Terry, Player in Her Time, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press, and Our Vampires, Ourselves.