SOURCE: "The World of the Macabre: The Short Stories," in Daphne Du Maurier, Twayne Publishers, 1987, pp. 123-40.

Kelly is an American critic and educator. In the following excerpt from his book-length biographical and critical study of du Maurier, he concludes that her characters often remain undefined and secondary to her formulaic plots, and that her best short stories are those that break out of this pattern, such as "Ganymede," "Don't Look Now, " and "The Birds. "

Before she embarked on her career as a novelist du Maurier had published a few of her short stories in the Bystander, a magazine edited by her maternal uncle, William Comyns Beaumont. She continued writing short stories during the next five decades, many of which appeared in such women's magazines as the Ladies Home Journal and Good Housekeeping. Most of these tales were later collected and published in The Apple Tree, 1952 (entitled Kiss...