Product Description

Both in her novels and her memoirs, Daphne du Maurier revealed an ardent desire to explore her family's history. In Myself When Young, based on diaries she kept between 1920 and 1932, du Maurier probes her own past, beginning with her earliest memories and encompassing the publication of her first book and her marriage. Often painfully honest, she recounts her difficult relationship with her father, her education in Paris, her early love affairs, her antipathy towards London life, and her desperate ambition to succeed as a writer. The resulting self-portrait is of a complex, utterly captivating young woman.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #530640 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Review
"A delightful autobiography... pinpointing the literary influences and the first stirrings of the books to be written." -- The Times

From the Publisher
Dame Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989) wrote more than twenty-five acclaimed novels, short stories, and plays, including Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, and The House on the Strand. She was also a passionate and skillful chronicler of her own remarkable family, which included artists, actors, speculators, writers, military men and courtesans. This is one of three of her finest biographical works to be reissued in the distinguished Virago Modern Classics series.

About the Author
Daphne du Maurier was born in 1906 and educated at home and in Paris. She began writing in 1928, and many of her bestselling novels were set in Cornwall, where she lived for most of her life. She was made a DBE in 1969 and died in 1989.

Customer Reviews

Must Read for Any Young Woman That Wants to Write
I sleep with a copy of Rebecca next to my bed - as a young writer I read it every now and then to remind myself of what I'm aiming for; I consider it a perfectly crafted novel, with beautiful writing, a compelling plot, and a character that I strongly identify with. DuMaurier's autobiography does not touch the time when she was writing Rebecca, but rather her life in London, Paris and in Cornwall, England from ages 3 to 25. If I could choose a life, her's would be the one I'd want. This is a must-read for anyone who feels that they have a gift of the written language (sometimes a burden, mostly a drive to do something REALLY BIG).