Daphne du Maurier has become indissolubly linked with Cornwall in the popular imagination, an identification that is constantly being reinforced by the tourist industry. A visit to Jamaica Inn will offer the sight of a brass plaque in the floor of the bar to mark the place where Joss Merlyn died. The fact that he never lived except in du Maurier’s imagination is conveniently ignored and the reality constructed by du Maurier’s fiction creates, year by year for hundreds of thousands of profitable tourists, a narrative of Cornwall that relies little on historically verifiable fact.
Ironically, du Maurier was not a regional writer, a native of Cornwall, but a sophisticated metropolitan who, on seeing “Ferryside”, the house on the River Fowey that her famous actor father (Gerald du
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Citation: Horner, Avril, Sue Zlosnik. "Dame Daphne Du Maurier". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 October 2001; last revised 26 May 2022. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1325, accessed 24 November 2024.]
