DU MAURIER, Daphne ~ Jamaica Inn.

FIRST UK PRINTING. Victor Gollancz Ltd, London: 1936.

8vo., pale blue cloth, lettered in darker blue to spine with publisher's name to foot; THE BOOK near fine, with slight shelf lean, and a few faint spots to the prelims and outer edge; lacking the rare dustwrapper. The book is protected in a removable mylar cover. First UK edition, first printing. One of Du Maurier's most popular and enduring works, 'Jamaica Inn' follows Mary Yellan as she travels from her birthplace in Helford to her aunt's coaching inn following the death of her parents. A series of dramatic and mysterious events unfold involving shipwrecks, smuggling and murder. Du Maurier was 29 years old when she wrote 'Jamaica Inn', and it was one of her first novels, preceding the fame of 'Rebecca' by two years. Born in London, she had spent many of her childhood summers in Cornwall, where the family had a holiday home, and was there that she wrote her first novel, 'The Loving Spirit', in 1931. The following year she married Major Frederick Browning, and in 1943 she moved back to Cornwall with their three children. Based on an existing Inn, du Maurier was inspired to write the story after a stay in November 1930 with Foy Quiller-Couch, (daughter of the then-revered author and literary critic Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch). Du Maurier later wrote that “I thought of the travellers in the past who must have sought shelter there on wild November nights … the drinking deep and long, fights breaking out, the sound of oaths, men falling.” The pair reportedly hired horses from the stables to ride on the open moors, but became lost in the rain and darkness. This gothic tale appeared several years later, and included some autobiographical influences - like the author herself, the protagonist is also 23, arrives on a bleak November day, and becomes lost on the moor at nightfall. "Jamaica Inn stands today", Du Maurier writes in her introductory note, "hospitable and kindly, a temperance house on the twenty-mile road between Bodmin and Launceston. In following the story of adventure I have pictured it as it might have been over a hundred and twenty years ago; and although existing place-names figure in the pages, the characters and events described are entirely imaginary." The book was later adapted into film by Alfred Hitchcock, making it the first of three of her novels to do so. He went on to do the same for 'Rebecca' and Du Maurier's short story 'The Birds'. The new ending, demanded by the actor Charles Laughton, was reportedly deplored by the writer.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine