Daphne du Maurier: The Writer Who Made Cornwall Famous

When Daphne du Maurier first saw the ruins of Menabilly House near Fowey in 1927, she was twenty years old and instantly bewitched. "I stood there like someone who had been turned to stone," she wrote. The abandoned mansion would become Manderley in her most famous novel, "Rebecca."

Du Maurier was not Cornish by birth — she was a Londoner, daughter of the famous actor Gerald du Maurier. But from her first visit to Cornwall at age nineteen, she knew she had found her spiritual home.

She leased Menabilly in 1943 and lived there for twenty-six years, writing novels that would introduce Cornwall to the world: "Jamaica Inn," set on Bodmin Moor with its smugglers and storms; "Frenchman's Creek," with its pirate hideaway on the Helford River; "Rebecca," whose brooding atmosphere echoes the Cornish coast.

Her Cornwall was dark and romantic — a land of secrets, hidden coves, and passionate women trapped by circumstance. She walked for miles along the cliffs, gathering the moods and landscapes that would fill her books.

Alfred Hitchcock adapted three of her works into films. "Rebecca" won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1940. "The Birds" terrified a generation. Jamaica Inn still draws visitors who want to stay where Mary Yellan faced the wreckers.

Du Maurier died in 1989, but her Cornwall endures. The Fowey Festival celebrates her every May, and pilgrims still seek out the hidden creek where her Doña St Columb met her French pirate.

Source: Daphne du Maurier Literary Centre, public biographical archives, and the Fowey Festival historical records. Biographical information from public sources.