New Daphne Du Maurier Poems Discovered in Photo Frame

Daphne Du Maurier ‘s undiscovered poems have been found in an old photo frame containing a snapshot of the young author.

The photograph and frame were owned by Du Maurier’s close friend, Maureen Baker-Munton, who had kept over 40 years worth of correspondence between them. After Baker-Munton’s son put the collection up for auction the letters were discovered by Roddy Lloyd, the auctioneer responsible for selling the items.

The auctioneer was cataloguing the archive when he decided to look more closely at the photograph of young Du Maurier at the beach. “We were going through the last box of documents on my kitchen table, when for some reason I decided to take the picture out to have a better look. When I took it out of the frame, out popped these poems. It looks like they’re from around the 1920s.”

Photo credit: Deep South Media

Roddy Lloyd believes the letters and poems were written by the author when she was still young, perhaps in her 20s.

“The poems are not juvenile ones of a child, nor the polished products of her later years,” Lloyd explained. “They show her working on her craft at an interesting time and are perhaps from her early visits to Ferryside, at Bodinnick in Cornwall, where she would write. The Song of the Happy Prostitute is really interesting but not, perhaps, what one would expect from Du Maurier – which might explain why it was hidden away in this fashion, probably by Du Maurier herself. It was then given to her great friend Maureen.”

“Why do they picture me as tired and old … selling myself with sorrow, just to gain a few dull pence to shield me from the rain.” ~The Song of the Happy Prostitute

“When I was ten, I thought the greatest bliss / Would be to rest all day upon hot sand under a burning sun .. / Time has slipped by, and finally I’ve known / The lure of beaches under exotic skies / And find my dreams to be misguided lies / For God! how dull it is to rest alone.”

~Untitled

Among the poems were intimate letters between Maureen and Daphne, illustrating the author’s feelings about her relationship with her husband, and detailing her grief following his death after 33 years of marriage. Despite their relationship troubles, his alcoholism and affairs, Du Maurier wrote about him with tenderness and an abiding love.

The archive also includes letters detailing Du Maurier’s own affairs and relationships with women including Gertrude Lawrence and the unrequited love of Ellen Doubleday, her publisher’s wife.

The archive will be a wonderful addition to any collection, and is up for sale at Rowley’s on the 27th of April.