Last Night I Dreamt…

A couple of words on the January ‘theme’, because it’s always nice to join the dots. Our ‘cover star’ on the inner envelope this month was, as you may have deduced (or will simply now know, if you’re still awaiting arrival, which you may well be, in which case, er, spoilers!) Daphne du Maurier. Born in London in 1907, she died a Dame, in Cornwall, in 1989.

A prolific and fascinating writer, du Maurier’s most famous novel is likely ‘Rebecca’, a much-requested and much-loved regular feature in our questionnaires, which we always enjoy sending out, and if you’ve never read it, it’s the one with the opening line, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”, which is the answer to a good many pub quiz questions. Never out of print, Wikipedia gives me the incredible fact that the novel sold 2.8m copies in its first 17 years of publication.

The tie-in to our unusually cinematic postcard is that du Maurier, either famously or surprisingly, depending on whether you already knew it or not, wrote the short story, The Birds, which inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic film of the same name. If you’d like to hear a marvellously 1950’s dramatisation of du Maurier’s short story, I highly recommend the Escape one, from 1954. A fine and wintery tale of fear and panic for a chilly January night. You may wish to close the curtains whilst you listen, if you’re near, well, any birds.

Her novels span the historic, romantic, gothic and pre-modern, but her short stories are even more interesting (to me, at least), and varied. The Guardian kindly reprints her bizarre and long-lost tale, The Doll, which contains lightly disturbing scenes and (mostly implied) sexual content you might not immediately associate with her name. I rather enjoy happening upon collections of her short stories, and it’s always a pleasure to send them out – they appeal to such a wide variety of genres, and contain true gems of atmosphere, imagery and language.

There’s so much more to know and read about du Maurier, I won’t pretend to offer anything more than a starting point here, but she offers a most fascinating and, in true 20th century authorial style, controversial figure. If you’ve yet to enjoy her work, try the links above, and, if you subscribe with us at Prudence and the Crow and would like to read more of it, just drop us a line through our Contact Us page with your name and thoughts, no matter the genre you’re signed up for, and we’ll update your preferences so that at some point, one of her finest will wing its way to you!

All the best for now, and we hope to bring you more of these slightly-themed, slightly-interesting posts as we go along, to make your box last a little longer each month!

Yours,
~ Prudence (and the Crow)