To be famous for just one novel—even a novel as good as Rebecca —is a mixed blessing for any author. Daphne du Maurier wrote 17 novels, a few plays, and numerous short stories, but she’s known chiefly for the narrative of the unnamed second Mrs. de Winter, a woman so overshadowed by her husband’s late first wife that her own story is titled after her predecessor. 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. But as for du Maurier’s other works—a literary legacy whose substance she struggled to defend against critics who dismissed her as merely a “romantic” novelist—relatively few readers know much about them.

After Midnight , a new collection of du Maurier

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