From Library Journal
In an engaging prose style, Auerbach, a scholar of Victorian and feminist studies, reveals her literary passion for du Maurier, which started at age 12 while she was attending summer camp. She devotes a chapter to du Maurier's familyAher grandfather, novelist George du Maurier, and her father, actorAmanager Gerald du Maurier-and how these strong men were reflected in her fiction, turning her novels and stories into a reaction against her male heritage. Auerbach also examines film versions of du Maurier's work, revealing how Hitchcock and others romanticized the dark vision of Rebecca and other fictions. While the critic's emphasis on the gloomy side of du Maurier may turn off some potential readers, she does succeed in her aim of rescuing her chosen author from the label of "romantic writer." For undergraduate and large public library collections.AMorris Hounion, New York City Technical Coll., Brooklyn Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Catherine Saint Louis
...a fascinating portrait of du Maurier's career as family chronicler, avid researcher and frank anatomist of familial cruelty.


From Kirkus Reviews
Last night I dreamed of . . . a Daphne du Maurier whose works were ``startlingly brilliant,'' peopled with ``most unsavory'' men and ``defective'' women, and whose exegesis here is shrouded in literary fog. In this inaugural volume in a new series of Personal Takes, Auerbach (history and literature/Univ. of Pennsylvania; Our Vampires, Ourselves, 1995, etc.) begins with an interesting enough thesis: that the prolific du Maurier (17 novels, 6 biographies, 2 plays, and a dozen collections of articles and stories), now best known for the Alfred Hitchcock movie versions of her novel Rebecca and her sinister short story ``The Birds,'' is unfairly categorized as a writer of ``romances'' in which suffering heroines fall into the arms of masterful males and live happily ever after. In fact, in tales with male narrators like The Scapegoat and ``Hungry Hill'' (among the author's favorites), her protagonists are killers, albeit otherwise dependent and inadequate men; the women, however feisty they may seem, are destined to have ``something gone wrong inside,'' whether it be uterine cancer (Rebecca) or paralysis (The King's General). As if that weren't depressing enough, novels are further described as ``unabashedly dull'' (The Glassblowers) or ``grim'' (Jamaica Inn), and du Maurier herself as weird. The influence of du Maurier's family (which included her grandfather George, the popular author of Trilby and creator of Svengali, whose literary talent Daphne is ``heiress'' to), plus themes of incest, lesbianism, anti-Semitism, and ``boyishness'' (viz. Peter Pan), are analyzed at length. The discussion is frequently muddled and contradictory (at different points, du Maurier was and was not influenced by the Bront sisters). A concluding chapter revisits the films, especially Hitchcock's, excoriating most of them for reducing intense and often ugly emotional conflicts to clichd romance. A valiant but unconvincing effort to resuscitate du Maurier to literary respectability. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

SYNOPSIS

Auerbach (history and literature, University of Pennsylvania) examines the writer of depth and recklessness now largely known only as the author of Rebecca, looking at how her sharp-edged fiction, with its brutal and often perverse family relationships, has been softened in film adaptations of her work. She reads both du Maurier's life in her writings, and the sensibility of a vanished class and time that haunts the fringes of our own age. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

In an engaging prose style, Auerbach, a scholar of Victorian and feminist studies, reveals her literary passion for du Maurier, which started at age 12 while she was attending summer camp. She devotes a chapter to du Maurier's family--her grandfather, novelist George du Maurier, and her father, actor--manager Gerald du Maurier-and how these strong men were reflected in her fiction, turning her novels and stories into a reaction against her male heritage. Auerbach also examines film versions of du Maurier's work, revealing how Hitchcock and others romanticized the dark vision of Rebecca and other fictions. While the critic's emphasis on the gloomy side of du Maurier may turn off some potential readers, she does succeed in her aim of rescuing her chosen author from the label of "romantic writer." For undergraduate and large public library collections.--Morris Hounion, New York City Technical Coll., Brooklyn Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Internet Book Watch

Du Maurier is the author of almost twenty novels, articles, plays, memoirs and short stories; yet is known for a relatively limited handful of popular works. Daphne Du Maurier: Haunted Heiress analyzes her lesser-known volumes and their characters, providing a strong literary analysis of metaphors in her writing, and ethnic and social observations of her choices and times. The result is a revealing, absorbing study.

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