Many have been successfully adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca, Frenchman's Creek, My Cousin Rachel and Jamaica Inn, and the short stories "The Birds" and "Don't Look Now".

[3] Her paternal grandfather was author and Punch cartoonist George du Maurier, who created the character of Svengali in the 1894 novel Trilby.

[7] Du Maurier spent her childhood at Cannon Hall, Hampstead, the family's London residence, and summers at their home in Fowey, Cornwall, where they also lived during the war years.

[8] Biographers have claimed that du Maurier's marriage was at times somewhat chilly, and that she could be aloof and distant to her children, especially the girls, when immersed in her writing.

Her husband died in 1965 and soon afterward Daphne moved to Kilmarth, near Par, Cornwall, which became the setting for The House on the Strand, and where she became an early member of Mebyon Kernow, a Cornish nationalist party.

[12] An exception to her reticence to give interviews came after the release of the film A Bridge Too Far, based on a book by Cornelius Ryan, in which her late husband was portrayed in a less-than-flattering light.

[16] Du Maurier stated in her memoirs that because her father had wanted a son,[9] she became a tomboy, in an attempt to get the parental approval she would have had, had she been born a boy.

In correspondence that her family released to biographer Margaret Forster, du Maurier explained to a trusted few people that she felt her personality comprised two distinct people – the loving wife and mother side she showed to the world, and the lover side, a "decidedly male energy", hidden from virtually everyone, which was the power behind her artistic creativity.

[20] Aldrich said that Lawrence had toured Britain in the play in 1948 and continued with it in London's West End theatre district through 1949, and that later du Maurier visited them at their home in the United States.

[3][22] 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.

In the United States, du Maurier won the National Book Award for favourite novel of 1938, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association.

[24] 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.

Du Maurier was often categorised as a "romantic novelist", a term that she deplored,[25] given that her novels rarely have a happy ending, and often have sinister overtones and shadows of the paranormal.

[27] 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.

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.

[citation needed] 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.

Her first was an adaptation of her novel Rebecca, which opened at the Queen's Theatre in London on 5 March 1940 in a production by George Devine, starring Celia Johnson and Owen Nares as the De Winters and Margaret Rutherford as Mrs. Danvers.

In 1943 she wrote the autobiographically inspired drama The Years Between about the unexpected return of a senior officer, thought killed in action, who finds that his wife has taken his seat as Member of Parliament (MP) and has started a romantic relationship with a local farmer.

It was first staged at the Manchester Opera House in 1944 and then transferred to London, opening at Wyndham's Theatre on 10 January 1945, starring Nora Swinburne and Clive Brook.

It was revived by Caroline Smith at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames on 5 September 2007, starring Karen Ascoe and Mark Tandy.

Shortly after Rebecca was published in Brazil, critic Álvaro Lins and other readers pointed out many resemblances to the 1934 book, A Sucessora (The Successor), by Brazilian writer Carolina Nabuco.