Daphne Du Maurier’s

(1938) is one of the most popular novels of the twentieth century, and has repeatedly been adapted for film and television, but as Sally Beauman writes in her introduction to the Virago Press’s recent edition, “from the time of first publication, [it] has been woefully and wilfully underestimated.” Until recently it was mostly viewed as an archetypal piece of romantic fiction, a twentieth-century rewriting of

in which a poor young woman falls in love with a moody, upper-class man, but is tyrannised by the mysteries of his country house. Victor Gollancz, the original publisher, thought it an “exquisite love story”, but Du Maurier herself was of the opinion that the novel was “rather grim and unpleasant” and intended it as “a study in…

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Citation: Harrington, Louise. "Rebecca". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 October 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2473, accessed 24 November 2024.]

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