Daphne du Maurier: Writing, Identity and the Gothic Imagination

This book is the first full-length evaluation of du Maurier's fiction and the first critical study of du Maurier as a Gothic writer. Using the most recent work in Gothic and gender studies, the authors enter the current debate on the nature of female Gothic and raise questions about du Maurier's relationship to such a tradition. They demonstrate that using recognizable popular forms, she was able to explore through Gothic writing the anxieties of modernity in the kind of fiction many people find accessible. This, they claim, explains the compulsive quality of her best novels and their enduring popularity.