Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier | Hardcover | Doubleday | 1942 | First cheapest Edition

Frenchman's Creek
By Daphne du Maurier
Hardcover
Doubleday
1942
First Edition

Author of "Rebecca"

Attractive dust jacket is well worn around the edges, depicts pirate ship leaving anchor with woman on shore line quietly observing.

Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning (1907 1989) was an English author and playwright. Although she is classed as a romantic novelist, her stories seldom feature a conventional happy ending, and have been described as "moody and resonant" with overtones of the paranormal. These bestselling works were not at first taken seriously by critics, but have since earned an enduring reputation for storytelling craft. Many have been successfully adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel, and Jamaica Inn and the short stories "The Birds" and "Don't Look Now/Not After Midnight".Du Maurier spent much of her life in Cornwall where most of her works are set. As her fame increased through her novels and the films based upon them, she became more reclusive. Her parents were the actor/manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and stage actress Muriel Beaumont, and her grandfather was the cartoonist and writer George du Maurier. The novel Rebecca (1938) was one of du Maurier's most successful works. It was an immediate hit, sold nearly 3 million copies between 1938 and 1965, has never gone out of print, and has been adapted for both stage and screen several times. In the U.S. she won the National Book Award for favourite novel of 1938, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association. In the UK, it was listed at number 14 of the "nation's best loved novel" on the BBC's 2003 survey The Big Read. Other significant works include The Scapegoat, The House on the Strand, and The King's General. The last is set in the middle of the first and second English Civil Wars, written from the Royalist perspective of her adopted Cornwall. Several of her other novels have also been adapted for the screen, including Jamaica Inn,Frenchman's Creek, Hungry Hill, and My Cousin Rachel. The Hitchcock film The Birds(1963) is based on a treatment of one of her short stories, as is the film Don't Look Now(1973). Of the films, du Maurier often complained that the only ones she liked were Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca and Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now. 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. Du Maurier also felt that Olivia de Havilland was wrongly cast as the anti-heroine of My Cousin cheapest Rachel. Frenchman's Creekfared better in a lavish Technicolor version released in 1944. Du Maurier later regretted her choice of Alec Guinness as the lead in the film of The Scapegoat, which she partly financed. (Wikipedia)