Many have been successfully adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca, Frenchman's Creek, My Cousin Rachel, and Jamaica Inn, and the short stories The Birds and Don't Look Now/Not After Midnight. She continued writing under her maiden name, and her subsequent novels became bestsellers, earning her enormous wealth and fame. A prestigious publishing house accepted her first novel when she was in her early twenties, and its publication brought her not only fame but the attentions of a handsome soldier, Major (later Lieutenant-General Sir) Frederick Browning, whom she married. Her family connections helped her establish her literary career, and she published some of her early work in Beaumont's Bystander magazine. She spent her youth sailing boats, travelling on the Continent with friends, and writing stories. Her elder sister, Angela du Maurier, also became a writer, and her younger sister Jeanne was a painter. She and her sisters were indulged as a children and grew up enjoying enormous freedom from financial and parental restraint. Born into a family with a rich artistic and historical background, her paternal grandfather was author and Punch cartoonist George du Maurier, who created the character of Svengali in the 1894 novel Trilby, and her mother was a maternal niece of journalist, author, and lecturer Comyns Beaumont. In many ways her life resembles a fairy tale. Of course, I ordered the book immediately.Daphne du Maurier was born on at 24 Cumberland Terrace, Regent's Park, London, the middle of three daughters of prominent actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and actress Muriel, née Beaumont. Without that attention to detail, I might never have found the story, so I am indebted to that bookseller. The bookseller had been meticulous in how he entered the book for sale, naming the title of each short story and the author. A bookseller had a copy of The Editor Regrets… edited by George Joseph, published in 1937 and comprising fifteen short stories, all of which had been rejected by book and/or magazine publishers.

I searched widely on the internet and through the book trade for years until one day, a result popped up on an AbeBooks search. I searched the major libraries, such as the Bodleian and the British Library, which have copies of every book published, but nothing. Many of her papers had been lodged in the Special Collections Archive at the University of Exeter, including several outlines of potential short stories and completed early short stories, some of which had never been published.

For years after Daphne died, there was still no trace of that particular short story.

The doll daphne du maurier