DU MAURIER DAPHNE: (1907-1989) British Author. An entertaining T.L.S., Daphne, two pages, 8vo ...

DU MAURIER DAPHNE: (1907-1989) British Author. An entertaining T.L.S., Daphne, two pages, 8vo, Menabilly, Par, Cornwall, 2nd August 1963, to Meaburn [Staniland]. Du Maurier announces 'The full treatment, and in August of all months? Don't be silly' and continues 'Now look here, this photograph on the back of the American edition of Branwell is one of the best I have ever had taken, at least I think so, and its much more recent than the one you are running in the present Penguins. I'm pretty sure its my own copyright too, so it would cost nothing, but this can be discovered by checking with the old girl who took it, Miss Compton Collier. (Used to live in Maida Vale)', further explaining 'I used to keep copies of this photograph to send around when pestered (nothing personal intended) and Doubleday in New York must have had the last one. How about it?'. Du Maurier continues to write on the subject of publishers and their use of author's images, 'Actually, when you talk about The Loving Spirit, my first novel, which I wrote when I was 22 (1929) tho' it wasn't published until 1931, you really ought to have a picture of me as I was at that time. It always seems to me silly, when authors's (sic) first books are re-published, to have pictures of them years later; for instance, silly to publish Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall, say, with a picture of him looking an old buffer as he is today. The young Waugh was so different. (Pause for reflection - Do I mean Decline and Fall, or was that someone else, No, I mean Vile Bodies.) Likewise of Human Bondage, you need the young Willie Maugham, not that ancient sinner of nearing 90'. In concluding Du Maurier adds that she has no more news, 'Have been swimming a lot, very tanned, look like Gandhi'. VG

Meaburn Staniland (1914-1992) English Editor, Author and Antiquarian Bookseller who worked at Penguin books in the 1960s and 1970s.