Rebecca (novel) glamorous, dark-haired Jan Ricardo. The suspicion that Tommy remained attracted to Ricardo haunted Daphne." In "The Rebecca Notebook" of 1981, du Maurier "'remembered' Rebecca's gestation … Seeds began to drop. A beautiful home... a first wife... jealousy, a wreck, perhaps at sea, near to the house... But something terrible would have to happen, I did not know what..." She wrote in her notes prior to writing: 'I want to build up the character of the first [wife] in the mind of the second... until wife 2 is haunted day and night... a tragedy is looming very close and CRASH! BANG!
George du Maurier the novel, is known to this day as a "trilby". The plot inspired Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel "Phantom of the Opera" and the innumerable works derived from it. Du Maurier eventually came to dislike the persistent attention given to his novel. The third novel was a long, largely autobiographical work entitled "The Martian", only published posthumously in 1896. George du Maurier was a close friend of Henry James, the novelist; their relationship was fictionalised in David Lodge's "Author, Author". He was buried in St John-at-Hampstead churchyard in Hampstead parish in London. George du Maurier George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier