Daphne Du Maurier, storyteller extraordinaire, has long been beloved for her spellbinding twisty plots and alluring female characters. Du Maurier's fiction transformed everyday dramas--love, jealousy, loss--into the stuff of gothic nightmares. Not only are Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel page-turners, but their complex plots and ambiguous characters are crafted in indelible, elegant prose. (Rebecca was an tt bestseller that has never gone out of print for 88 years!) Directors Alfred Hitchcock and Nicholas Roeg were inspired to make two of her stories into films. The Birds and Don't Look Now are cinematic masterpieces of suspense and terror.
This SDG explores Du Maurier's most well-known novels and short fiction paired with their iconic films. Over 11 weeks, we will read two novels, two short stories, and watch four films.
Week 1 Rebecca, (1938) Chapters 1-11
Week 2 Rebecca, (1938) Chapters 12-19
Week 3. Rebecca, (1938) Chapters 20- 27
Week 4 Rebecca, Alfred Hitchcock, 1940
Week 5. My Cousin Rachel, (1951) Chapters xxx
Week 6. My Cousin Rachel, (1951) Chapters xxx
Week 7. My Cousin Rachel, (1951) Chapters xxx
Week 8. My Cousin Rachel, Roger Miller, 2017 (This recent version, staring Rachel Weisz, shows how Du Maurier's work can be filtered successfully through contemporary sensibilities).
Week 9 The Birds and Don't Look Now (short stories)
Week 10 Don't Look Now, Nicolas Roeg, 1973
Week 11 The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock, 1963
Du Maurier, Daphne. Rebecca. First Back Bay paperback ed. New York: Back Bay Books, 2023. Originally published 1938.
Du Maurier, Daphne. My Cousin Rachel. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks Landmark, 2017. Originally published 1951.
Don't Look Now: Selected Stories of Daphne Du Maurier, New York Review Classics, 2008
The films are available for streaming on various platforms.