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.

Laura Varnam
The House on the Strand

Roger was my keeper, I was his. There was no past, no present, no future. Everything living is part of the whole. We are all bound, one to the other, through time and eternity, and, our senses once opened, as mine had been opened by the drug, to a new understanding of his world and mine, fusion would take place, there would be no separation, there would be no death… This would be the ultimate meaning of the experiment, surely, that by moving about in time death was destroyed. This was what Magnus so far had not understood. To him, the drug released the complex brew within the brain that served up the savoured past. To me, it proved that the past was living still, that we were all participants, all witnesses. I was Roger, I was Bodrugan, I was Cain; and in being so was more truly myself.
The House on the Strand, Ch.14, p.189, Virago (2003).

The House on the Strand is the novel that got me hooked on the works of Daphne du Maurier. As a tutor of medieval literature, I can entirely empathise with Dick Young's excitement at the drug's ability to transport him back into the Middle Ages and be 'witness to events that happened centuries past, unremembered, unrecorded' (HOTS, Ch.6, p.72). What I love about the passage I have chosen, however, is the sinister overtones which creep into Dick's narration. His experience in the past has made him almost arrogant, he believes that he alone understands the drug's possibilities, more clearly even than Magnus, his mentor. At the time she was writing The House on the Strand, du Maurier had become interested in the ideas of the psychologist Carl Jung and the notion of the 'collective unconscious', a kind of ancestral memory bank of experience shared by humanity. But here there is something rather menacing about the 'fusion' which the return of the past might provoke. The unification of mankind 'through time and eternity' - Dick, Roger, the first murderer Cain - sounds like a scientific experiment gone wrong. The desire for the destruction of death recalls the threatening, uncomfortable atmosphere of other du Maurier short stories such as The Breakthrough and Don't Look Now where curiosity and the desire for knowledge of the supernatural are accompanied by danger and risk.
Laura Varnam.

Dr Laura Varnam is tutor in Old and Middle English Literature at University College, Oxford.

At the 2007 Daphne du Maurier Centenary Conference in Fowey, organised by Exeter University, Laura presented a paper entitled Locating the Medieval Past: Daphne du Maurier and Literary Landscape. AW.

Ella Westland
The House on the Strand

The first thing I noticed was the clarity of the air, and then the sharp green colour of the land. There was no softness anywhere. The distant hills did not blend into the sky but stood out like rocks, so close that I could almost touch them, their proximity giving me that shock of surprise and wonder which a child feels looking for the first time through a telescope … every impression was heightened, every part of me singularly aware: eyesight, hearing, sense of smell, all had been in some way sharpened.
The House on the Strand, Ch.1, p1, Virago (2003).

So much of Daphne du Maurier's power as a novelist derives from her brilliance in sweeping her readers along for chapter after chapter that I have found it hard to capture the qualities that I most admire in her writing in a few quotable lines. One of the ways she casts her spell, however, is through mesmerising description, and she was particularly adept in using it in her opening pages to inveigle readers into the world of a novel. These arresting words from the beginning of The House on the Strand take us immediately inside her narrator's head to share the intensity of his drug-induced vision. Ella Westland.

Ella Westland is the author of Reading Daphne, Truran (2007). CL.

Sam Rimington
The House on the Strand

He did not say anything. He just sat there staring at me.
The telephone went on ringing, and I crossed the room to answer it, but a silly thing happened as I picked up the receiver. I couldn't hold it properly; my fingers and the palm of my hand went numb, and it slipped out of my grasp and crashed to the floor. The House on the Strand, Ch.24, p.329. Virago (2003).

Drugs were all the rage in some circles when Daphne wrote this book; she even contemplated trying them herself, in the interests of research, but decided, wisely, against going through with it. It always fills me with horror thinking how Dick becomes enmeshed in the power of the time travelling drug and is ultimately lost. Sam Rimington.

David Montgomery
The House on the Strand

The first thing I noticed was the clarity of the air, and then the sharp green colour of the land. There was no softness anywhere. The distant hills did not blend into the sky but stood out like rocks, so close that I could almost touch them, their proximity giving me that shock of surprise and wonder which a child feels looking for the first time through a telescope. Nearer to me, too, each object had the same hard quality, the very grass turning to single blades, springing from a younger, harsher soil than the soil I knew.
I had expected – if I expected anything – a transformation of another kind: a tranquil sense of well-being, the blurred intoxication of a dream, with everything about me misty, ill-defined; not this tremendous impact, a reality more vivid than anything hitherto experienced, sleeping or awake. Now every impression was heightened, every part of me singularly aware: eyesight, hearing, sense of smell, all had been in some way sharpened.
The House on the Strand, Ch.1, p.1, Virago (2003).

I have been reading Daphne's books since my schooldays. Apart from the imaginative story lines, the descriptive quality of the prose is outstanding. David Montgomery.

David Montgomery is Daphne du Maurier's son-in-law. AW.

David Willmore
The House on the Strand

I wondered that neither of them heard the wheels, and then I saw they were not with me any longer. The wagonette had gone, and the mail van from Par had come up the lane and stopped beside the gate.
It was morning. I was standing inside the drive leading to a small house across the valley from Polmear hill. I tried to hide myself in the bushes bordering the drive, but the postman had already got out of his van and was opening the gate. His stare combined recognition and astonishment, and I followed the direction of his eyes down to my legs. I was soaking wet from crutch to foot: I must have waded through bog and marsh. My shoes were water-logged and both trouser legs were torn. I summoned a painful smile.
He looked embarrassed. 'You're in a proper mess,' he said. 'It's the gentleman living up Kilmarth, isn't it?'
'Yes,' I relied.
'Well, this is Polpey, Mr Graham's house. But I doubt if they're up yet, it's only just turned seven. Were you intending to call on Mr Graham?'
'Good heavens, no! I got up early, went for a walk, and somehow lost my way.'
The House on the Strand, Ch.9, p.111, Virago (2003).

This piece always makes me smile, as I know Mr & Mrs Graham and Mrs Graham is most emphatic about the fact that they would have been up before seven, but for the purpose of the novel, Daphne (who was a good friend of theirs) said that they would not be up at that time! David Willmore.

David Rogers
The House on the Strand

There are few strains more intolerable in life than waiting for the arrival of unwelcome guests.
The House on The Strand, Ch.13, p.157, Virago (2003).

David Rogers chose just one favourite sentence. However, as an experienced church organist he felt compelled to write to Daphne in 1970 about some music and ecclesiastical references in chapter 13, (p.161). Their cordial exchange of views is in the du Maurier archives at Exeter University. Sheila Hodges, Daphne's editor acknowledged that the phrase: 'He's fond of music, particularly church music, Gregorian chants and plainsong' was a bit of tautology adding: 'sometimes she became fascinated by the sound of words and the rhythm of phrases, occasionally to the detriment of their meaning. But this always seemed one of the charms of her writing, because it contributed to the music of her prose.' CL.