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Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship
Letters from Menabilly Portrait of a Friendship Author:Daphne du Maurier, Oriel Malet (Editor) Daphne du Maurier’s correspondence with Oriel Malet began in the early 1950s, after they met at a cocktail party in London. At least twenty years separated them: Oriel was a gauche young writer while Daphne was the famous, much-feted author of bestselling novels including Jamaica Inn, My Cousin Rachel and Rebecca. — The friendship flourishe... more »d for thirty years, fed by the letters that arrived faithfully from Menabilly, the du Maurier house in Cornwall. While Oriel tasted life on a houseboat on the Seine and mixed with the artistic Who’s Who of Paris, Daphne’s letters tell of her family, past and present, her marriage to General Sir Frederick Browning -- a war hero known privately as “Moper,” whose fits of melancholy caused many a crisis at Menabilly -- and events like Prince Philip coming for dinner: “We’ve got only four knives with handles, and one silver candlestick must be glued!” Most of all, though, her letters are a valuable record of the complex and rigorous art of a fine and well-loved writer: the “brewing” of a plot, the research, and the “pegging” of secret fantasies onto a living person in order to create classic characters such as Cousin Rachel and Roger Klymerth.« less