Du Maurier’s literary signature was crafting a story filled with suspense – something which reached its peak in her best-seller, Rebecca. The immense success that Rebecca has enjoyed over the years can be attributed to the brilliant storytelling skills of the author. The author skillfully weaves a tale full of thrilling mystery and suspense centered around the beautiful house of Manderley – a mystery that is never quite resolved even after the last page.

It has never gone out of print even once. Published to great acclaim in 1938, this novel has been capturing the hearts of readers across the world even today. The binding depicts Rebecca’s monogram, a bold ’R’ overshadowing a smaller ’de W’, a symbol of Rebecca’s charisma and her dominion over the second Mrs de Winter.Rebeccais undoubtedly the most popular novel that du Maurier has penned in her life. Smith’s illustrations for this edition play with the inscrutable nature of Du Maurier’ two heroines, never fully revealing the anonymous narrator nor the bewitching, enigmatic Rebecca. With its subtle layers of ambiguity and concealment, Rebecca, as Dunmore writes, is a ’mesmerising novel which reveals more on each reading’. Increasingly isolated by her husband’s erratic moods, and the sinister manipulations of Mrs Danvers, the second Mrs de Winter ventures ever deeper into Manderley’s brooding secrets. In death as in life, Rebecca holds sway over Manderley and all who knew her, from the tormented and malevolent housekeeper, Mrs Danvers, to the failing mother-in-law who cries out her name. Embodying everything that her successor lacks, Rebecca is held up as a peerless, charismatic beauty whose allure is only heightened by her tragic demise. But, plagued by feelings of inadequacy and insecurity, she becomes obsessed with the image of Maxim’s deceased first wife, Rebecca. For this gauche girl, life begins when the handsome and elusive Maxim de Winter rescues her from an odious employer and makes her his wife and mistress of Manderley, his legendary ancestral home.

Meek and malleable but with a compelling narrative voice, Rebecca’s unreliable narrator is a masterly creation, artfully wielded by the author to beguile and disorientate the reader. ‘A mesmerising novel which reveals more on each reading’

Introducer Helen Dunmore discusses how this extraordinary psychological thriller, with its echoes of Jane Eyre, is also a searing exploration of patriarchy, retribution, female sexuality and class prejudice. This edition of Daphne du Maurier’s macabre masterpiece features a bold cover design and atmospheric colour and black and white images by D. An immediate success on its release, Rebecca gripped readers with its drama, romance and mystery, and was soon adapted for film by Alfred Hitchcock.

Rebecca by daphne du maurier