The King's General The King's General The King's General is a novel, published in 1946, by English author and playwright Daphne du Maurier. It was the first novel Du Maurier wrote while living at Menabilly, the setting for an earlier novel "Rebecca", where it is called 'Manderley'. The writing of the novel was accompanied by prolific research, in which Du Maurier was assisted by Oenone Rashleigh and historian A. L. Rowse, to ensure the historical accuracy of her presentation of the Devon/Cornwall setting at the time of the Civil War. The historical precision and accuracy made it popular among local people, but the
Daphne du Maurier affair with Gertrude Lawrence, as well as her attraction to Ellen Doubleday, the wife of her U.S. publisher Nelson Doubleday, were cited. Du Maurier stated in her memoirs that her father had wanted a son; being a tomboy, she wished to have been born a boy. "The Daphne du Maurier Companion", edited by Helen Taylor, includes Taylor's claims that du Maurier confessed to her in 1965 that she had had an incestuous relationship with her father and that he had been a violent alcoholic. In correspondence that her family released to biographer Margaret Forster, du Maurier explained to a trusted