She Was One of Literature’s Most Misunderstood Writers. A New Book Corrects the Record.

True, some are aware that two of du Maurier’s short stories, “The Birds” and “Don’t Look Now,” were adapted as great films by Alfred Hitchcock and Nicolas Roeg, respectively. After Midnight, a new collection of du Maurier’s short stories with an introduction by Stephen King, makes a bid to correct that. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementLike Jackson, du Maurier was a mid-20th-century woman writer whose work didn’t always abide by conventional notions of femininity. While both women could be flinty and unsentimental, du Maurier, unlike Jackson, was an expert invoker of atmosphere and environment. From the pages of After Midnight emerges a sense of du Maurier that’s far from the meek, naive narrator of Rebecca.