THE FOLIO SOCIETY

It was in her shorter prose that Daphne du Maurier allowed a free rein to her remarkable imagination. Published in the centenary year of du Maurier’s birth, The Folio Society has drawn together the finest eight short stories from across her career, all written with a tightly controlled energy that makes them irresistibly haunting. Colin Wilson found the stories ‘equal to Edgar Allan Poe’ and no reader could fail to be caught by du Maurier’s sense of atmosphere and suspense. It is no surprise that these qualities appealed so strongly to film-makers.

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic film immortalised the story ‘The Birds’, while Nicholas Roeg created a powerful homage to ‘Don’t Look Now’ in his 1973 version starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland.

If these are the most famous in the collection, the other stories are no less memorable. In ‘The Apple Tree’ a mismatched couple continue to stifle one another beyond the grave. ‘The Pool’ describes a young girl who glimpses a magical world in the woods, but finds herself barred from it as puberty approaches. This story has an unsettling Peter Pan quality, interesting when one remembers that J. M. Barrie was a close family friend and told the young Daphne stories of enchanted islands that only children could visit. To the author herself, ‘The Chamois’, a powerful and unsettling tale of an elusive animal hunted by a young English couple on holiday, was ‘the most subtle story I have yet done’. Fascinating psychological meditations, du Maurier’s short stories provide new insight into a uniquely talented writer.