Daphne du Maurier and her Sisters
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
The Du Mauriers – three beautiful, successful and rebellious sisters, whose lives were bound in a family drama that inspired Angela and Daphne’s best novels. Much has been written about Daphne but here the hidden lives of the sisters are revealed in a riveting group biography.
The middle sister in a celebrated artistic dynasty, Daphne du Maurier is one of the master storytellers of our time, author of ‘Rebecca’, ‘Jamaica Inn’ and ‘My Cousin Rachel’. Her success and fame were enhanced by films of her novels and horrifying short stories, ‘Don’t Look Now’ and the unforgettable ‘The Birds’ among them. But this fame overshadowed her sisters Angela and Jeanne, a writer and an artist of talent, living quiet lives even more unconventional than Daphne’s own.
In this group biography they are considered side by side, as they were in life, three sisters brought up in the hothouse of a theatrical family with a peculiar and powerful father. This family dynamic reveals the hidden lives of Piffy, Bird & Bing, full of social non-conformity, creative energy and compulsive make-believe, their lives as psychologically complex as a Daphne du Maurier plotline.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"In biography, families are the soil out of which character grows," observes Dunn (Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell) in this study of novelist Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca) and her much lesser-known siblings: elder sister, Angela, who wrote two memoirs and a novel about lesbian love;, and youngest sister, Jeanne, who became a visual artist. Born to prominent theater family, they grew up among a glamorous set in Edwardian London before moving to Cornwall. Sheltered by their conservative parents, the sisters created a world of make believe and depended on another for companionship. Dunn's eager, if repetitive narrative follows the sisters as they discover their place in the world, and seek love, vocations, and independence. Not surprisingly, Daphne gets the most attention. However, Angela who burned much of her correspondence emerges as a sympathetic figure, almost always in Daphne's shadow and desperate for love. Angela and Jeanne both found their primary emotional attachments with women, a fact made more astonishing given their father's horror at any hint of homosexuality. Overall, the author's affection for her subjects comes through. Illus.
