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With these words, the reader is ushered into an isolate...)
With these words, the reader is ushered into an isolated gray stone mansion on the windswept Cornish coast, as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the chilling events that transpired as she began her new life as the young bride of a husband she barely knew. For in every corner of every room were phantoms of a time dead but not forgottena past devotedly preserved by the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers: a suite immaculate and untouched, clothing laid out and ready to be worn, but not by any of the great house's current occupants. With an eerie presentiment of evil tightening her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter walked in the shadow of her mysterious predecessor, determined to uncover the darkest secrets and shattering truths about Maxim's first wifethe late and hauntingly beautiful Rebecca.
This special edition of Rebecca includes excerpts from Daphne du Maurier's The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories, an essay on the real Manderley, du Maurier's original epilogue to the book, and more.
Trilby : A NOVEL . by: George du Maurier. Illustration by: AUTHOR
(Trilby is a novel by George du Maurier and one of the mos...)
Trilby is a novel by George du Maurier and one of the most popular novels of its time. Published serially in Harper's Monthly in 1894, it was published in book form in 1895 and sold 200,000 copies in the United States alone. Trilby is set in the 1850s in an idyllic bohemian Paris. Though it features the stories of two English artists and a Scottish artist, one of the most memorable characters is Svengali, a rogue, masterful musician and hypnotist. Trilby O'Ferrall, the novel's heroine, is a half-Irish girl working in Paris as an artists' model and laundress; all the men in the novel are in love with her. The relationship between Trilby and Svengali forms only a small, though crucial, portion of the novel, which is mainly an evocation of a milieu. Luc Sante wrote that the novel had a "decisive influence on the stereotypical notion of bohemia" and that it "affected the habits of American youth, particularly young women, who derived from it the courage to call themselves artists and 'bachelor girls,' to smoke cigarettes and drink Chianti
(The Martian, by George du Maurier, published in 1898 is a...)
The Martian, by George du Maurier, published in 1898 is a long, largely autobiographical, novel that describes the lives of two bosom friends, Barty Josselin and Robert Maurice, starting from their school days in Paris in the 1850s. Today it is considered one of the greatest Victorian novels ever. du Maurier was also the grandfather of Daphna du Maurier, the author of Rebecca.
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When Daphne du Maurier wrote this book she was only thi...)
When Daphne du Maurier wrote this book she was only thirty years old and had already established herself both as a biographer, with the acclaimed Gerald: A Portrait, and as a novelist. The Du Mauriers was written during a vintage period of her career, between two of her best-loved novels: Jamaica Inn and Rebecca. Her aim was to write her family biography 'so that it reads like a novel' and it was due to du Maurier's remarkable imaginative gifts that she was able to breathe life into the characters and depict with affection and wit the relatives she never knew, including her grandfather, the famous Victorian artist and Punch cartoonist - and creator of Trilby.
'Miss du Maurier creates on the grand scale; she runs through the generations, giving her family unity and reality . . . a rich vein of huour and satire . . . observation, sympathy, courage, a sense of the romantic, are here' Observer
George du Maurier was an English illustrator, cartoonist, and novelist.
Background
George du Maurier was born in Paris, France on March 6, 1834. His background is closely connected with his two famous novels, Peter Ibbetson and Trilby. His father was a Frenchman of noble descent, and his mother was an Englishwoman; thus Du Maurier was at home in two cultures.
Education
After a false start as a chemist, Du Maurier studied art for a year in Paris.
Career
George supported himself, first as an illustrator of novels, and then, from 1864 onward, as a contributor of satirical drawings to Punch. Fearing that blindness would end this career, he turned to the writing of novels, which owe some of their charm to the pictures he drew for them. His novels have two distinct veins of interest: a plot that hangs on some psychic problem, and a graceful depiction of sections of his own past life, altered to fit a particular story. Du Maurier himself had a special regard for the hypnotism theme of Trilby and the "dreaming true" of Peter Ibbetson; but readers usually find more attractive his sentimental descriptions of childhood in Paris and of the Latin Quarter in the 1850's. These descriptions, the idealized drawings of Victorian beauty, that decorate his pages and the rather mild social satire of both the cartoons and the novels are Du Maurier's chief claim to fame. Peter Ibbetson was published in 1891. It purports to be a memoir written in prison by the hero, Ibbetson. This memoir reveals the strange process of "dreaming true" by which Ibbetson, a prisoner for life, enjoys many years of companionship with the beautiful Duchess of Towers. In their shared dreams, Ibbetson and the Duchess not only recapture their own childhood but come to know distant ancestors. The chief charm of the novel is its romantic nostalgia, but it also suggests a substitute for conventional religion: the two lovers will finally be united in an evolving universe which can come to fulfillment only in time and through the experience of mortals. Trilby, published in 1894, is a picture of artistic life in Paris in the 1850's. Three Englishmen become enamored of a beautiful Irish model, Trilby, particularly famous for her lovely feet. The girl returns the love of one of them, "Little Billee, " but gives him up because she feels she is not worthy of him. Despondent, she falls into the hands of a sinister musician, Svengali, who by means of hypnosis transforms her into the greatest singer of the era. When Svengali dies, Trilby's skill vanishes; and she soon wastes away and dies, surrounded by those who have loved her. Here and elsewhere in the novel, there are echoes of Henri Murger's La Vie de Bohème.