Poems by Daphne du Maurier Found in Photograph Frame

Two poems by Daphne du Maurier, author of Rebecca, have been discovered tucked behind a framed photo of the author “in a swimming costume standing on rocks, which was part of an archive of more than 40 years of correspondence between the author and her close friend,” as The Guardian’s Alison Flood reports. More:

In one of the poems, titled Song of the Happy Prostitute, Du Maurier writes: “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.” On the other side of the sheet of paper hidden behind the photograph, she writes in an untitled poem of how:

“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.”

[Auctioneer Roddy] Lloyd said he believed they were written by Du Maurier when she was in her 20s. “The poems are not juvenile ones of a child, nor the polished products of her later years,” he said. “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.”

Read more about the archive's contents at The Guardian.