Portrait of Daphne du Maurier

Birthday profile

Daphne du Maurier

Daphne du Maurier, English novelist and playwright (died 1989)

Born
May 13, 1907
Died
April 19, 1989
Zodiac sign
Taurus
Birth year
1907

About Daphne du Maurier

Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, (; 13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989) was an English novelist, biographer and playwright. Her parents were actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and his wife, actress Muriel Beaumont. Her grandfather George du Maurier was a writer and cartoonist. Du Maurier spent much of her life in Cornwall, where most of her works are set. As her fame increased, she became more reclusive. Some of du Maurier's notable works include the novels Jamaica Inn (1936), Rebecca (1938) and My Cousin Rachel (1951), and the short stories "The Birds" (1952) and "Don't Look Now" (1971). Her works have been adapted into film, with notable examples including Jamaica Inn (1939), Rebecca (1940) and The Birds (1963) by Alfred Hitchcock, Don't Look Now (1973) by Nicolas Roeg, My Cousin Rachel (2017) by Roger Michell, and Rebecca (2020) by Ben Wheatley. Her paternal grandfather was author and Punch cartoonist George du Maurier, who created the character of Svengali in the 1894 novel Trilby. Her elder sister, Angela du Maurier, became an actress and later also a writer, and her younger sister Jeanne du Maurier was a painter.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Daphne du Maurier was born

Daphne du Maurier was born in 1907. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1907

  • Best-selling book"The Lady of the Decoration" – Frances Little

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentChicago Cubs win first of back-to-back World Series titles
  • Top headlinePanic of 1907 — financial crisis leads to Federal Reserve creation
  • Technology milestoneFirst commercial helicopter design
  • World population~1.67B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderTheodore Roosevelt
  • U.S. population86.0M

1907 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Daphne du Maurier's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19072026
Population86.0M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.