Captivated
  • Published: 3 August 2009
  • ISBN: 9780099520450
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

Captivated

J. M. Barrie, Daphne Du Maurier and the Dark Side of Neverland

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An extraordinary book about the imagination - and the astonishing force of its creative power ... for evil as well as good.

Captivated is a true story of genius and possession. The background is the turn of the century, when a late-nineteenth-century world of mesmerists, psychics, trancers and table-turners gave way to a new twentieth-century age of psychology. The central character is the creator of Peter Pan, the famous novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie, a man tormented by inner demons since childhood.

Barrie developed a consuming interest in the du Maurier family, beginning with George du Maurier, author of Trilby, a bestselling novel featuring his creation Svengali. In Trilby, George showed how it is possible, by means of hypnosis, for one person to gain control over the mind of another.

Barrie made his move on the du Maurier family immediately after George died, assuming George's mantel and using his ideas to dominate both his daughter Sylvia and his son Gerald. Soon Barrie was 'Uncle Jim' to Sylvia's five sons and Gerald's three daughters, playing romping games of adventure and make-believe, and inviting the children into the transcendental world of Neverland. Four of the boys (the 'lost boys' of Peter Pan) and one of the girls (the imaginative tomboy Daphne) were captivated.

This fascinating book delves deep, makes links and yields up secrets. It is a story of bliss corrupted by greed which masquerades as supernatural power. It tells how Barrie's victims - whom he would have not grow up - were lost to breakdown, suicide or an early death when they did. Daphne du Maurier, author of Rebecca, emerges as the lost boys' surprise companion and the enigmatic chronicler of their fate. Captivated is about writing and the world of the imagination: it is a singular example of art being used not only to imitate life, but darkly to transform it.

Piers Dudgeon knew Daphne du Maurier and worked with her in the 1980s. When he discovered that she had put a moratorium on publication of her adolescent diaries until fifty years after her death, he was prompted to begin his researches into her background. What was the mystery that had Daphne been so keen to suppress?
  • Published: 3 August 2009
  • ISBN: 9780099520450
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

About the author

Piers Dudgeon

Piers Dudgeon is the author of many works of non-fiction. He worked for ten years as an editor in London before starting his own company producing books with authors as diverse as John Fowles, Catherine Cookson, Peter Ackroyd, Daphne du Maurier, Shirley Conran and Ted Hughes. Subsequently, he left London for Yorkshire where he wrote a number of biographies as well as illustrated books evocative of the spirit of place.

Praise for Captivated

The pathology of the artist - the motivations, temperament, clashes between public and private behaviour - is the real subject of Dudgeon's meticulous and highly provocative study of three writers... Dudgeon knows what he's doing and builds his case with precision and coolness... A gripping read

Scotsman

Dudgeon characterises [Barrie's] association with the Llewellyn Davies family... and with Daphne du Maurier, and her father, the actor Gerald, as the Kiss of Death and the embrace of mental illness. Barrie's shadow side, as a manipulative monster without conscience, is linked to the darker aspects of Rebecca, Peter Pan and Svengali, the hypnotic character created by Gerald

The Times

He has written his literary biography, Captivated, from the heart...The subject matter is absorbing, disturbing and baffling in equal measure...offers a vivid picture of Barrie's and George Du Maurier's murky psychological environment, and in so doing proves a valuable addition to literary history

Glasgow Herald

Dudgeon tells a terrible story without sentimentality, without sensationalism and without undue psychologising.... Intelligently and feelingly done

Sunday Herald

An intriguing story of genius and madness...what he reveals fascinates and repels.

Pat Quayle, Cornish World

Meticulously researched... it is from this generous amount of detail that Captivated earns its greatest interest.

Megan L McCarty, The Irish Times

Wonderfully batty...a rattling grisly read...I defy you not to be captivated

Sunday Times