Daphne du Maurier

Earth takes four of her ten planets, water three, air two and a single one fire, with five of the ten cardinal. This chart holds no closed figure of any kind. The record says du Maurier wrote Rebecca and the stories behind The Birds and Don't Look Now, and was consistently reviewed as a romantic novelist, which she was not.

Two Mercury contacts carry this chart and they pull in opposite directions. Mercury sits sixty degrees from Jupiter at six hundredths of a degree, close enough to call exact, which is learning that comes easily: breadth, genuine curiosity, and an ability to make complicated things sound simple. And it sits in mild friction with Saturn at just over two thirds, which is thought meeting doubt: self criticism, and difficulty being understood. A novelist the record says was consistently reviewed as something she was not is the subject those two contacts have to account for, and between them they manage it.

A novelist the record says was persistently misread has those two at those orbs, the easy breadth and the standing difficulty of being taken for what she was, and the pair of them together is a better description of that record than either on its own. Saturn sits a fifth of a turn from Uranus at four tenths of a degree, practical innovation: new ideas that actually get built, and an unusual patience for slow change. The Sun sits in quiet contact with Pluto at under a degree, emotional endurance. The Sun itself sits at twenty two degrees of Taurus with Mercury at nine, the sign that accumulates rather than announces, and Mars sits at sixteen degrees of Capricorn with Uranus at twelve and retrograde. Her Moon sits on the fifth degree of Gemini at noon with Taurus still possible, which costs this chart its second closest contact, so that is left out along with the Moon itself. Uranus alone was retrograde.

She died at Par in Cornwall on 19 April 1989, at eighty one. Neptune stood conjunct her natal Uranus at seven hundredths of a degree that day, the closest thing in that sky. The Moon was gibbous and ninety seven per cent lit, a phase that refines, questions and improves, and rarely calls anything finished.