An Interesting du Maurier-related Newspaper Cutting from 1947

An interesting newspaper cutting came to light recently, and we thought you would like to share it with us.

It was found in a collection of albums/scrapbooks, some of which were Fowey-related.  The original owner had written the date of the article on the cutting, in pen.  So, we know it was published in November 1947, but we don’t know which newspaper it appeared in.  If it were a local newspaper, it could have been the Western Morning News.

As you can see, the cutting refers to the occasion when Daphne du Maurier was summoned to New York to answer a case which said that when she had written her best selling novel, Rebecca, she had plagiarised the short story I Planned to Murder My Husband (1924) and the novel that came from it, Blind Windows (1927) by Edwina Lewin Macdonald. 

The Macdonald family brought a lawsuit against Daphne du Maurier, her American publisher, Doubleday, and the Selznick organisation, who had produced the 1940 film of Rebecca.  As is well known, the result of the case was that Rebecca was not found to have been plagiarised from the works of Edwina Lewin Macdonald.

Our thanks go to Marcus Lewis for sharing this information with us.

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