We hope the example of Daphne's family will encourage you to post on this webpage your favourite lines other than the universally well-loved opening to Rebecca. Perhaps you'll be inspired to re-read her books and discover other lines with a special meaning for you.

Virago Press has published almost thirty of Daphne's books in paperback with a delightful hardback edition of Vanishing Cornwall. These have introductions by established authors, some of whom have presented at our Festival and submitted their own favourite lines below.

If you have already REGISTERED as a Member, please use the SUBMIT form to send your favourite lines to us, where they will be reviewed by Ann Willmore.

"Your Favourite Lines" is based on an original idea by Collin Langley.

John Rose
Hungry Hill

The little church stood quite alone, windswept and solitary, looking out over the wide waters of Mundy Bay. But for all its stark position, exposed to the four winds and the rains of winter, there was something comforting and strong in its grey solidity, something ageless in the lichen that clung about its walls. Inside all was peaceful, all was quiet, as though no evil thought, no hard memory, could penetrate the still serenity. The gales might blow, the floods might come, but the church of Ardmore would withstand them all, a small bastion in eternity.
Hungry Hill, Book 4, Ch.1, p.306, Virago (2008).

In this short paragraph, Daphne halts the relentless tumult of the Brodrick family history to express the unchanging serenity of the countryside, epitomised by 'the little church by the sea at Ardmore'. John Rose.

Sally Hing
Jamaica Inn

She lifted the sash and looked out. She was met with a blast of wind and rain that blinded her for the moment, and then, shaking clear her hair and pushing it from her eyes, she saw that the coach was topping the breast of a hill at a furious gallop, while on either side of the road was rough moorland, looming ink-black in the mist and rain.
Ahead of her, on the crest, and to the left, was some sort of a building, standing back from the road. She could see tall chimneys, murky dim in the darkness. There was no other house, no other cottage. If this was Jamaica, it stood alone in glory, foursquare to the winds. Mary gathered her cloak around her and fastened the clasp.
Jamaica Inn, Ch.1, p.14, Virago (2003).

I've always loved my visits to Cornwall and no visit would ever be complete without first stopping at Jamaica Inn. There has always been something special about the isolated inn on the moor and to me it symbolises the end of a long, tiresome journey and marks the real gateway to Cornwall, more so than the official county sign.
I prefer it when the weather is bad and love to be there in the heavy rain and with my hair blowing everywhere - it's all the more evocative then and I feel like Mary Yellan did on her first visit. The ritual is repeated on the journey home; always a final stop and a last look around before reluctantly leaving it behind till the next time. Sally Hing.

Christopher Clayton
The Rebecca Notebook & Other Memories

Yet I had seen his empty shell. I had seen the light flicker and go out. Where had it gone? Was it blown to emptiness after all, like the light of a candle, and does each one of us, in the end, vanish into darkness? If this is so, and our dreams of survival after death are only dreams, then we must accept this too. Not with fear and dismay, but with courage. To have lived at all is a measure of immortality; for a baby to be born, to become a man, a woman, to beget others like himself, is an act of faith in itself, even an act of defiance. It is as though every human being born into this world burns, for a brief moment, like a star, and because of it a pinpoint of light shines in the darkness, and so there is glory, so there is life. If there is nothing more than this, we have achieved our immortality.
The Rebecca Notebook & Other Memories, Death and Widowhood, p.127, Virago (2004).

Death featured strongly in Daphne's life and writing. The lines are about the death of her husband Major General Browning (responsible for Operation Market Garden, portrayed in the film A Bridge Too Far.) They call forth the hope expressed in Death and Widowhood that he had found the 'peace which passes all understanding' in which he believed. However, Daphne doubted that we have a life after death; she explained in detail her scepticism regarding religion, god and an afterlife in her essay This I Believe, also to be found in The Rebecca Notebook & Other Memories. Even so, if in the end we all 'vanish', for a brief moment we burn like a star which shines in the darkness. At the end of her family biography The du Mauriers, in which she also questions human immortality, she finds it consoling to imagine that 'we leave something of ourselves, like the wake of a vessel, as a reminder that once we passed this way.' Her thoughts on the death of her husband surely have profound meaning for those of us who do and for those of us who do not believe in an afterlife. Christopher Clayton.

Sylvia Ruck
Jamaica Inn

She laughed because she must, and because he made her; and there was an infection in the air caught from the sound and bustle of the town, a sense of excitement and well-being; a sense of Christmas. The streets were thronged with people, and the little shops were gay. Carriages, and carts, and coaches too, were huddled together in the cobbled square. There was colour, and life, and movement; the cheerful crowd jostled one another before the market stalls, turkeys and geese scratched at the wooden barrier that penned them, and a woman in a green cloak held apples above her head and smiled, the apples shining and red like her cheeks. The scene was familiar and dear; Helston had been like this, year after year at Christmas-time; but there was a brighter, more abandoned spirit about Launceston; the crowd was greater and the voices mixed. There was space here, and a greater sophistication; Devonshire and England were across the river. Farmers from the next county rubbed shoulders with countrywomen from East Cornwall; and there were shop-keepers and pastrycooks, and little apprentice-boys who pushed in and out amongst the crowd with hot pasties and sausage-meat on trays. A lady in a feathered hat and a blue velvet cape stepped down from her coach and went into the warmth and light of the hospitable White Hart, followed by a gentleman in a padded greatcoat of powder-grey.
Jamaica Inn, Ch.9, p145/6, Virago (2003).

I find the book really quite dark but saying that, difficult to put down! The passage I have chosen reflects a lighter side to the story and one that shows the high level of descriptive narrative. Somehow this reminds me of my own childhood in a Bedfordshire village in the 1950's. I think it reminds me of the village events near Christmas time, not that we had 'hot pasties and sausage-meat on trays'! It just conjures up a really good feeling. Sylvia Ruck.

Sylvia is head teacher of Great Dunmow Primary School, Essex. CL.

Margery Instrell
The Rebecca Notebook & Other Memories

…
Mine is the silence
And the quiet gloom
Of a clock ticking
In an empty room,
The scratch of a pen,
Ink-pot and paper,
And the patter of the rain.
Nothing but this as long as I am able,
Firelight - and a chair, and a table.
…
Not for me the shadow of a smile,
Nor the life that has gone,
Nor the love that has fled,
But the thread of the spider who spins on the wall,
Who is lost, who is dead, who is nothing at all.
The Rebecca Notebook & Other Memories, Poems, The Writer (1926), p.175/7, Virago
(2004).

Daphne's poem anticipates an uncertain future as a writer, a life like the spider's thread, lacking secure ties. The imagery of her final stanza just makes me stop and reflect on life, its meaning for me and undoubted fragility. The poem was written before Daphne's first novel and perhaps an irony that it should be published in the final book by one of the most successful 20Ce authors. Margery Instrell.

Sue Simpson
The King's General

She reminded me of something, and suddenly I knew. I was a tiny child again at Radford, my uncle's home, and he was walking me through the glass-houses in the gardens. There was one flower, an orchid, that grew alone; it was the colour of pale ivory, with one little vein of crimson running through the petals… It was the loveliest flower I had ever seen. I stretched out my hand to stroke the soft velvet sheen, and swiftly my uncle pulled me by the shoulder. 'Don't touch it child. The stem is poisonous'.
The King's General, Ch.2, p.14/15, Virago (2004).

This quote is from the passage where Honor, as a child, meets Gartred for the first time. The King's General is my all time favourite book and it is hard to choose just one passage, but this quote has huge significance to an event later in the book, which I did not see until I re-read the book, and I think there will be many other readers who have not noticed it either. I remember at the time being full of admiration for Daphne's brilliance at adding what seems like a fairly unimportant section at first. Sue Simpson.

Linda Cooke
Vanishing Cornwall

Here, in the Ropehaven, all is peace, the long afternoon drifts by, until a slow ripple against the anchor chain makes the boat swing to a leisurely dance and the helmsman becomes restive, sensing the first whisper of a breeze. The lazy wallow beneath the sun is over. Sails are hoisted, the anchor raised, sheets made fast, and we are homeward bound across the bay, a beam wind from the north-west whipping us back to Fowey. We throw mackerel lines astern and make them fast, and while one of us is intent on the trimming of sails the other stares towards the land, the clay-hills hard and white on the western skyline. Then the slope of the Gribbin peninsula approaches, bracken-covered, green, and beyond it, hull-down between its coverage of trees, two chimney tops and the grey roof of Menabilly.
Coming to the harbour entrance we wind in the lines, and one of them find a limp and long-dead fish whose protesting struggles neither of us felt. The breeze dies, the tide is slack, and with infinite cunning born of long experience the helmsman brings the sailing craft to her moorings at the opening of Pont Pyll. The buoy is lifted, the sails lowered and stowed, the fish cleaned, and as the stringy guts are thrown into the air all of Fowey's gulls appear, wheeling, screaming, until one more voracious than its fellows dives to the patch of water where the mess has fallen and gulps it wholesale.
This is the moment for pausing, for lighting a cigarette and glancing around to appraise the visiting craft, anchored in the pool below Polruan. Fowey town has been in shadow since earliest afternoon, but Polruan, and all the eastern hills sloping to Pont Creek, are caught by the vanishing sun, with the ripple on the water dusky red. It is a moment of satisfaction and tranquillity.
Vanishing Cornwall, Ch.3, Climate, p.40-42, Virago (2007).

Linda Cooke was the winner of the first Daily Telegraph Daphne du Maurier Competition in 1998. AW.

Linda Cooke
The Rebecca Notebook & Other Memories

When I think of Gerald… he has pottered downstairs to the drawing room one fine morning in search of cigarettes, while Mo is upstairs having a bath, and he is wearing silk pyjamas from Beale & Inman of Bond Street, topped by a very old cardigan full of holes that once belonged to his mother. He switches on the gramophone, and the hit song of the day, a sensuous waltz, floats upon the air. He holds out his arms to a non-existent partner and, closing his eyes, circles the room with the exaggerated rhythm of a musical-comedy hero, languid, romantic, murmuring with mock passion:

'I wonder why you keep me waiting,
Charmaine, my Charmaine ….'

Unseen by friends or fans, and unobserved, so he imagines, by any member of his family, Gerald obeys the instinct of a lifetime, and is acting to himself.
The Rebecca Notebook, The Matinee Idol, p.87, Virago (2004).

Linda Cooke was the winner of the first Daily Telegraph Daphne du Maurier Competition in 1998. AW.