Other editions of book Rebecca

FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION, 2nd Printing, Pocket Book #205, published October 1945. 1st printing was 1943. Original hardcover published by Doubleday Doran 1938. The story is so popular and successful that it has never been out of print. Plot summary: “"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again" is the book's famous opening line. While working as the companion to a rich American woman on holiday in Monte Carlo, the narrator, a naïve young woman in her early 20s, becomes acquainted with a wealthy Englishman, Maximilian (Maxim) de Winter, a widower aged 42. After a fortnight of courtship, she agrees to marry him and, after the wedding and honeymoon, accompanies him to his mansion in Cornwall, the beautiful West Country estate Manderley. A cautionary tale of young women seeking rich husbands.

Daphne du Maurier had written only Rebecca, she would still be one of the great shapers of popular culture and the modern imagination. Few writers have created more magical and mysterious places than Jamaica Inn and Manderley, buildings invested with a rich character that gives them a memorable life of their own.Rebecca has been variously described, firstly as an example of the Cinderella story but with the central character being helped from rags to riches by the older man who marries her rather than the more traditional help of a fairy godmother.Rebecca has also been described as the first major gothic romance in the 20th century. It certainly contains all the elements of the great gothic novel and had often been compared to Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, with the house so strongly influenced by the previous occupant, the brooding hero in the shape of Maxim, the mad woman in the shape of Mrs Danvers, the growing tension, and finally the house destroyed by fire.