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.

Piers Dudgeon
Castle Dor

It seemed to the doctor, standing there by the black pit which perhaps less than a dozen years or so ago had served as a mine shaft and been discontinued, that he hovered now in strange and sickening fashion on the threshold of another world. Whatever he said or did in the present time would only be repetition of a day gone by, and anyone who listened to his voice calling in the darkness would hear it as the voice of another, dead these thirteen hundred years.
'Trestane!' he called. 'Trestane!' and the sound of the changed name was not foolish in his ears, but strangely ominous, for the echo came back to him without the sharpness of his first cry. Now with a melancholy haunting note, the widely flung 'Trestane' sounded and died, and the echo was a whisper scarcely louder than a sigh.
Then, gripping his stick firmly in his hands, yet holding his breath with wonder, Doctor Carfax watched a figure rise slowly from the pit beyond him, climbing hand over hand from the depths, now slipping, now secure, and there was black mud about his head and shoulders, and blood upon his face, and the eyes were wild and staring...
'Who calls?'
Castle Dor, Ch.30, 'Then I must die for love of thee', p.263/4, Virago (2004).

In 1961-2, Daphne du Maurier and her husband, Tommy, researched Castle Dor together.
Her letters reveal: 'How often Tommy and I - the search for Tristan constantly in mind - strolled past Woodget Pyll and up the lane above, beside Lantyan Woods, past Lantyan Farm and down to the further creek beneath the viaduct, and wondered whether one of the islands, formed by the mud-flats in the creek when the tide withdraws, could have been the fighting ground of Tristan and Morholt'.
Here, in Castle Dor, Tristan is re-born as Amyot at Castle an Dinas, the finest hill fort in all Cornwall, in present time. This much neglected novel begun by J.M.Barrie's great friend, the Cornishman Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch returns the legend of Tristan to modern Cornwall, and put Daphne and her husband in touch with the area as never before. Piers Dudgeon.

Piers Dudgeon is the editor and co-publisher of Daphne du Maurier: Enchanted Cornwall – Her Pictorial Memoir, Penguin Group (1989) and author of Captivated: J.M. Barrie, the du Mauriers, and the dark side of Neverland, Chatto & Windus (2008). CL.