GREAT authors are deemed to be those giving profound and universal insights into the human condition. By that token, Daphne du Maurier falls short. However, for her grasp of atmosphere and sense of place, she is up there with the best. Rebecca has one of the most haunting introductions in English literature, starting with the killer, oft-quoted line: ‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.’ The description of the overgrown track to the house, with its malevolent ivy, monster shrubs and the rhododendrons 50ft high is overwrought, but it sets the tone for the entire story, in which the imagined and the real weave in and out of each other.
The gaucherie of the second Mrs de Winter reflected the introvert author’s own insecurities
When du Maurier sent the manuscript to her publisher Victor Gollancz in 1938, she confessed that it was ‘on the gloomy side’, with a beginning that is also its conclusion and an ending that was ‘a bit brief and a bit grim’. Although she’d already enjoyed success as a novelist with the period piece Jamaica Inn, she forecast that Rebecca wouldn’t sell, but she was wrong. A page turner if ever there was one, it flew off the shelves, undergoing 28 printings in its first four years in Britain. It has never been out of print since.
Critics of the time were underwhelmed by du Maurier’s middlebrow style and dismissed Rebecca as ‘a woman’s romantic novel’. Du Maurier herself said: ‘My novels are what is known as popular and sell very well, but I am not a critic’s favourite, indeed I am generally dismissed with a sneer as a bestseller and not reviewed at all.’
Denne historien er fra August 18, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra August 18, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
