The Shaping of a Writer
Daphne du Maurier's autobiography pinpoints the literary influences and overwhelming desire to explore the family history of the girl who became one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

'A delightful book, full of amusing and charming stories' THE TIMES

'Daphne du Maurier has no equal' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

'An intimate view of a creative personality . as richly evocative as any of her novels' LOS ANGELES TIMES

In Myself When Young, based on diaries that she kept from 1920-1932, the most famous du Maurier probes her own past, beginning with her earliest memories and encompassing the publication of her first book and her subsequent marriage.

Here, the writer is open and sometimes painfully honest about the difficult relationship with her father; her education in Paris; early love affairs; her antipathy towards London life and the theatre; her intense love for Cornwall and her desperate ambition to succeed as a writer. The resulting portrait is of a captivating and complex character. Both her novels and her non-fiction reveal Daphne du Maurier's overwhelming desire to explore her family's history.