![The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories by Du Maurier, Daphne [1907-1989]: (1981) | Little Stour Books PBFA Member](https://i0.wp.com/pictures.abebooks.com/inventory/22417507020.jpg?resize=268%2C369&ssl=1)
When I was looking at how to double up Novella a Day in May with Ali’s Daphne du Maurier Reading Week, there weren’t a lot of options my shelves. If du Maurier wrote any novellas, then I don’t have them. But The Rebecca Notebook and other memories does come in at novella length, and has been waiting on my shelves since 2009.
I’m sure every one of you has read Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier’s runaway bestseller of 1938, and also (I would argue) her best novel. It’s been adapted for stage and screen many times, and has certainly reached classic status. That was also true in 1983, when du Maurier was in her mid-70s and The Rebecca Notebook was published. “Why, I have never understood!” claims du Maurier in the introduction – not so much that she can’t believe it has been popular, one suspects, than that she thinks it no better and no worse than all the rest of her output.
Anyway, its popularity is sufficient to sell this collection of non-fiction pieces – though the notebook itself accounts for only about 20 pages. It is an outline of the novel, though as she details later chapter it becomes rather more fleshed out with scenes and dialogue that she wanted to note. The survival of the notebook is owed to a plagiarism legal case, brought by Edwina MacDonald for a novel called Blind Windows, which du Maurier had never heard of. Du Maurier’s notes were thus used in her defence.
My only memory of the plagiarism suit was that the notebook was produced in court, and after cross-questioning the judge dismissed the case. I gave the notebook to dear Ellen Doubleday as a memento, and all I can recollect, after that first visit to the States, was being seasick all the way home in the Queen Mary.
When, after many more visits to the Doubledays, dearest Ellen died, she left the notebook to her daughter Puckie. Puckie returned it to me. And I reread it, for the first time in thirty years, when I received it.
It is a curio, and I did find it interesting to see how much du Maurier kept the same and how much she changed from this 20-page outline. The ending changes, and Mrs Danvers becomes creepier. That famous opening section is introduced – or, rather, moulded from the original epilogue (which is also included, after the notebook). All of this is only interesting if you love Rebecca – which I do, so it was.
The rest of the book is essays written at various times across du Maurier’s long career. The first concerns her famous writer grandfather, the next her famous actor/director father. The ones I found most interesting related to Menabilly (the model for Manderley in Rebecca) – I hadn’t realised that du Maurier wrote Rebecca simply on the strength of trespassing in the grounds of the abandoned house, and it wasn’t until years later that she managed to negotiate a lease and live there for a couple of decades.
Other essays are less convincing – I can’t imagine anybody is interested in du Maurier’s idiosyncratic and somewhat naïve takes on religion, and certainly you won’t be by the time you come across them for the third time – but there is enough of interest in parts of this collection to make it very much worth tracking down.
I MUST buy this. Thanks for your post–very good.
hurrah!
I’m not really one for much non-fiction, and hardly ever any memoirs but… this does sound good!
A quick read, certainly!
I’ve just read and reviewed this for the reading week too and I agree with your thoughts on it. As a fan of Rebecca it was fascinating to see the changes in names, structure and characterisation from the original version and I loved her account of discovering Menabilly for the first time. Some of the other essays were weaker, but the book was worth reading for the Rebecca parts alone.
Now I want similar books for all the books I like!
I had no idea that Manderley was based on a real place, let alone a place where Du Maurier ended up living. Good for her! She manifested it!
She NAILED it! Sadly it’s not accessible to the public, but I have seen you can rent a cottage in the grounds, so…
This does sound fascinating, to see how Rebecca evolved. I always seem to be taken by surprise that the stories everyone knows so well didn’t arrive fully formed, because it seems impossible that they were ever anything other than what they are. But of course they were thought through, and developed and changed, and its so interesting to get some insight into that.
Ha, yes, I find it hurts my brain a bit to try to imagine books could be different – I found this while looking at all the manuscript edits Virginia Woolf made.
I had suspected the Rebecca stuff would be brief, but my interest is such that I have recently bought a copy of this book, to possibly read next year.
Excellent :)
Well done for getting a novella in for DDM Week, a triumph!
love killing two birds with one stone! Metaphorically…