Angela du Maurier

Cannon Hall, Hampstead, drawn by A.R. Quinton, 1911, the family home in London from 1916.

Ferryside, Bodinnick, Cornwall

Angela du Maurier (1 March 1904 – 5 February 2002) was an English novelist who also wrote two volumes of autobiography, It's Only the Sister (1951) and Old Maids Remember. She was the sister of Daphne du Maurier.

Life[]

The eldest of three daughters of the actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and actress Muriel Beaumont (maternal niece of William Comyns Beaumont), she was born in St Pancras, London.^[1] Her grandfather was the author and Punch cartoonist George du Maurier, who created the character of Svengali in the novel Trilby. Although three years older than her better known sister Daphne, she outlived her by thirteen years.

Originally aspiring to follow the family tradition of acting, she planned to be an actress and spent two seasons on the stage. She played Wendy Darling alongside both Gladys Cooper and Dorothy Dickson as Peter Pan.^[2] She worked on the land in Cornwall during the war and travelled extensively in Europe. She later turned to writing, with the release of her earlier works coinciding with the publication of her sister's Rebecca and Jamaica Inn. Her works of fiction include The Road to Leenane, Pilgrims by the Way, The Perplexed Heart, Reveille and Treveryan. She lived at Ferryside, the family house in Cornwall, for most of her life. She died in Wandsworth, London, aged 97.^[3]

Bibliography[]

• 1939 The Perplexed Heart
• 1940 The Spinning Wheel
• 1941 The Little Less
• 1942 Treveryan
• 1946 Lawrence Vane: a novel
• 1948 Birkinshaw and other stories
• 1950 Reveille
• 1951 It's Only the Sister: an autobiography
• 1952 Shallow Waters
• 1963 The Road to Leenane
• 1965 Old Maids Remember: autobiography
• 1967 Pilgrims by the Way
• 1969 The Frailty of Nature
• 1979 S is for Sin

References[]

Further reading[]

• Williams, Michael The Three du Maurier Sisters. Polperro Heritage Press ISBN 978-0-9570481-1-9