Angela du Maurier
Angela du Maurier (1 March 1904 – 5 February 2002) was an English former actress and novelist who also wrote two volumes of autobiography, "It's Only the Sister" (1951) and "Old Maids Remember" (1965). Her sister was the novelist Daphne du Maurier, and her grandfather the writer and cartoonist George du Maurier. Life. Angela du Maurier was born on 1 March 1904 in St Pancras, London, the eldest of three daughters of the actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and actress Muriel Beaumont . Her paternal grandfather was the author and "Punch" cartoonist George du Maurier, who created  the character of Svengali in the novel "Trilby". Her paternal uncle Guy du Maurier was a playwright. Her mother was a paternal niece of journalist, author, lecturer, and editor Comyns Beaumont. Her middle sister, Daphne, became a popular writer, and her younger sister Jeanne was a painter. She was also a cousin of the Llewelyn Davies boys, who served as J. M. Barrie's inspiration for the characters in the play "Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up". As a young child, du Maurier met many prominent theatre actors, thanks to the celebrity of her father. Originally  aspiring to follow the family tradition of acting, she planned to be an actress and spent two seasons on the stage. She played Wendy Darling alongside both Gladys Cooper and Dorothy Dickson as Peter Pan. After her father's death in 1934, du Maurier, together with her mother and her younger sister Jeanne, moved from Cannon Hall, the family home in Hampstead, to a smaller house nearby. The three of them also spent a lot of time at Ferryside, their home in Bodinnick, Cornwall, where they lived permanently after 1939. She worked on the land in Cornwall during the World  War II, and travelled extensively in Europe. She later turned to writing, with the release of her earlier works coinciding with the publication of her sister's "Rebecca" and "Frenchman's Creek". She published 12 novels and 2 autobiographies. She died at 97, on 5 February 2002 in Wandsworth. Although she was the eldest of the sisters, she outlived her middle sister Daphne by thirteen years, and her youngest sister Jeanne five years.