“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” This is arguably one of the most famous opening lines in all of English literature. It manages to immediately set the tone of the book, and start to build that atmosphere of suspense that is essential to the novel’s success.
Often compared to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Rebecca tells the story of a shy young woman who meets and falls in love with a rich, older Englishman by the name of Max de Winter. Curiously, the heroine is never given a name, and is only ever referred to as Mrs. de Winter. The newlyweds return to his fabulous country estate in Cornwall – Manderley – where their happiness is clouded by the memory of Max’s first wife, Rebecca.
Du Maurier began writing her most famous novel in 1937 when her husband, Tommy, was stationed in Egypt. He was a commanding officer in the Grenadier Guards. Egypt was hot, her small children required attention, and she had a great deal of trouble writing the novel. She originally conceived it as an exercise in jealousy where “wife No. 2 is haunted day and night” by what she thinks wife No. 1 was like. Du Maurier, hot and homesick, fantasized about walking in the woods and along the ocean shore in Cornwall and brought that description to life in “Rebecca.” She wrote a quarter of the novel in Egypt and finished it in a creative burst when she got home to England.
Find out more about the novel at this Daphne du Maurier website.