Rebecca (1938)-ESSAY: In Praise of Daphne du Maurier (Parul Sehgal, July 6, 2017, NY Times) In 1937 an Englishwoman - bright and bored and drowning in children - sat down and sketched out a story. “Very roughly, the book will be about the influence of a first wife on a second,” she wrote. “Until wife 2 is haunted day and night … a tragedy is looming very close and crash! Bang! Something happens.” -ESSAY: Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca taught me how to love literature: I didn’t have high hopes for Rebecca, but I believe it to be the underrated classic of the 20th century (John Crace, 20 Aug 2014, The Guardian) Then came Rebecca. I had no great hopes for it. As far as I recall, it had a fey-looking heroine on the front - I’m fairly sure I hadn’t read a book written by a woman since I’d stopped reading Enid Blyton - and a strapline that said “Daphne du Maurier’s classic gothic romance”. I didn’t know what a gothic romance was, but it didn’t sound that great. Still, the back cover blurb promised death and intrigue, so it was worth a punt. Better than mooching around aimlessly waiting for the TV schedules to start.I fear I’ve made a terrible mistake. I have never liked Wuthering Heights and, somehow, in my mind it became associated so closely with Rebecca that I’d never bothered reading the latter. Just the classification as a gothic romance made it seem to much of a chick book to be bothered. Obviously, I should have known better, given that Alfred Hitchcock had adapted it for film. Like Mr. Crace, above, I ended up being blown away by it. There are a number of delicious twists that I won’t give away, in case you’ve avoided it too, but it seems safe to say that one of the main themes is “gaslighting.” The young heroine is rescued from her servitude to a repellent wealthy American woman by the dashing, but solemn, Max de Winter. De Winter is an object of fascination in high society because of his legendary home, Manderley, and the tragic death of his wife, Rebecca. When the newlyweds return to the manor the new wife finds herself being compared to the old and found wanting. In particular, Rebecca’s maid, Mrs. Danvers, torments the woman she sees as unworthy to inherit the position of her former mistress. The entire novel is suffused not just with the gloom of the prior tragedy but with foreboding for what is to follow. As an exercise in creating an atmosphere, the novel is really unmatched. Come for the dread, stay for the psycho-sexual surprises. (Reviewed:) Grade: (A) Tweet Websites:-WIKIPEDIA: Daphne du Maurier -TRIBUTE SITE: DuMaurier.org: The official Daphne du Maurier website, approved by her Estate -FILMOGRAPHY: Daphne du Maurier (IMDB) -ENTRY: Daphne du Maurier (Good Reads) -ENTRY: Daphne du Maurier (Ebsco Knowledge Advantage) -ENTRY: Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989): Author of Rebecca (Library Thing) -ENTRY: Daphne du Maurier (University of Exeter: Centre for Literature and Archives) -ENTRY: Daphne du Maurier (Cornwall Guide) -ENTRY: Daphne du Maurier (Encyclopaedia Britannica) -ENTRY: Daphne du Maurier (Fantastic Fiction) -ENTRY: Daphne du Maurier, Author of Rebecca and Other Literary Thrillers (Nava Atlas, April 10, 2018, Literary Ladies Guide) -ENTRY: Your Guide to Daphne du Maurier: Rebecca and Beyond: If Shirley Jackson is the queen of gothic horror, Daphne du Maurier is the high priestess. (Kasey Noss, Oct 16, 2024, The Lineup) - - - - - -RADIO DRAMA: The World Of Daphne Du Maurier (Radio Echoes) -VIDEO: Daphne du Maurier documentary (Author Documentaries, Apr 4, 2021) -INDEX: “du maurier” (Paris Review) -INDEX: Daphne du Maurier (CrimeReads) -INDEX: “daphne du maurier” (The New Yorker) -INDEX: Daphne du Maurier (The Guardian) -INDEX: Daphne du Maurier (LitHub) -INDEX: “du maurier” (NY Times) -INDEX: “daphne du maurier” (New York Review of Books) -INDEX: “daphne du maurier” (Internet Archive) -VIDEO INDEX: daphne du maurier (YouTube) - -WIKIPEDIA: Rebecca (novel) - - -STORY: Don’t Look Now (Dapne du Maurier)[pdf] -RADIO DRAMA: Saturday-Night Theatre: Rebecca (First broadcast: 27 December 1989) -RADIO DRAMA: Daphne Du Maurier Don't Look Now : Classic Serial: Don't Look Now (Sun 9th Dec 2001, 15:00 on BBC Radio 4 FM) -AUDIO: Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (full audiobook) (Tony Walker, Sep 10, 2023, Classic Ghost Stories Podcast) -AUDIO: Don't Look Now by Daphne Du Maurier. The original story behind the 1970s classic (Tony Walker, Mar 26, 2021, Classic Ghost Stories Podcast) -AUDIO: The Birds by Daphne du Maurier (Tony Walker, Sep 15, 2022, Classic Ghost Stories Podcast) -AUDIO: Frenchman's Creek (2013) by Daphne Du Maurier, read by Jenny Agutter (Mystical Magpie, September 1995) -EBOOK INDEX: Daphne du Maurier (Standard ebooks) - - -PODCAST: How to Read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (Benjamin McEvoy, Sep 21, 2025, Hardcore Literature Book Club -STUDY GUIDE: Daphne du Maurier (eNotes) -STUDY GUIDE: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier: Analysis and Inception (The Novelry) -ENTRY: Rebecca (Good Reads) -STUDY GUIDE: Daphne du Maurier (Grade Saver) - - - -ARTICLE: An Extraordinary Parallel Between Miss du Maurier's "Rebecca" and a Brazilian Novel; Literary Coincidence (Frances R. Grant, Nov. 16, 1941, NY Times) -ARTICLE: ' Rebecca' Publisher Denies Any 'Parallel' (NY Times, Nov. 21, 1941) -ESSAY: Rebecca and The Successor: The Uncanny Similarities (Ana Claudia Paxao, 6/17/25, Miscelana) -ESSAY: When Someone Has Already Written Your Book (Evie Gaughan, 9/04/18) -ESSAY: Who Really Inspired Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca?: An attempt to untangle a persistent literary mystery, inspired by Netflix’s new adaptation of du Maurier’s classic gothic novel. (Rosemary Counter, October 19, 2020, Vanity Fair) -ARTICLE: An Extraordinary Parallel Between Miss du Maurier's "Rebecca" and a Brazilian Novel; Literary Coincidence (Frances R. Grant, Nov. 16, 1941, NY Times) -ARTICLE: ' Rebecca' Publisher Denies Any 'Parallel' (NY Times, Nov. 21, 1941) -ESSAY: Rebecca and The Successor: The Uncanny Similarities (Ana Claudia Paxao, 6/17/25, Miscelana) -ESSAY: When Someone Has Already Written Your Book (Evie Gaughan, 9/04/18) -ESSAY: Who Really Inspired Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca?: An attempt to untangle a persistent literary mystery, inspired by Netflix’s new adaptation of du Maurier’s classic gothic novel. (Rosemary Counter, October 19, 2020, Vanity Fair) -ESSAY: Wrestling With Ghosts: an intimate investigation into the plagiarism case involving Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Carolina Nabuco’s A Sucessora (José Eduardo Lins, Oct 21, 2024, Medium) -INTERVIEW: The Best Daphne du Maurier Books recommended by Laura Varnam: Daphne du Maurier is one of the most overlooked writers of the twentieth century, says Oxford University's Laura Varnam. As her best known-work, Rebecca, continues to attract new movie adaptations and du Maurier enjoys a critical renaissance, Varnam explores the books which highlight this novelist's sheer range and brilliance-from biography and fiction to history and horror. (Interview by Stephanie Kelley, Five Books) -ESSAY: ‘She wrote the best first line – and the most chilling stories’: Stephen King on the dark brilliance of Daphne du Maurier: From Rebecca to The Birds and scores more creepy short stories, Du Maurier was queen of the uncanny, writes the US horror maestro (Stephen King, 28 Sep 2025, The Guardian) -ESSAY: The real-life Manderley, and the other country houses that inspired Daphne du Maurier: The writer Daphne du Maurier was fascinated by the English country house. Jeremy Musson explores her evocation of these buildings with the help of photographs from the Country Life Image Archive and a series of specially commissioned drawings by Matthew Rice. (Jeremy Musson, 28 December 2025, Country Life) -ESSAY: If Any Writer Is Due for a Revival, It’s One of Literature’s Most Misunderstood Novelists (Laura Miller, September 30, 2025, Slate) -INTERVIEW: Daphne du Maurier always said her novel Rebecca was a study in jealousy: Seventy-five years after Daphne du Maurier published 'Rebecca’, her son tells Christian House how the author’s own torrid life inspired this enduring story (Christian House, 17 August 2013, The Telegraph) -ESSAY: In Praise of Daphne du Maurier (Parul Sehgal, July 6, 2017, NY Times) In 1937 an Englishwoman - bright and bored and drowning in children - sat down and sketched out a story. “Very roughly, the book will be about the influence of a first wife on a second,” she wrote. “Until wife 2 is haunted day and night … a tragedy is looming very close and crash! Bang! Something happens.” -ESSAY: Wrestling With Ghosts: an intimate investigation into the plagiarism case involving Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Carolina Nabuco’s A Sucessora (José Eduardo Lins, Oct 21, 2024, Medium) -INTERVIEW: The Best Daphne du Maurier Books recommended by Laura Varnam: Daphne du Maurier is one of the most overlooked writers of the twentieth century, says Oxford University's Laura Varnam. As her best known-work, Rebecca, continues to attract new movie adaptations and du Maurier enjoys a critical renaissance, Varnam explores the books which highlight this novelist's sheer range and brilliance-from biography and fiction to history and horror. (Interview by Stephanie Kelley, Five Books) -ESSAY: ‘She wrote the best first line - and the most chilling stories’: Stephen King on the dark brilliance of Daphne du Maurier: From Rebecca to The Birds and scores more creepy short stories, Du Maurier was queen of the uncanny, writes the US horror maestro (Stephen King, 28 Sep 2025, The Guardian) -ESSAY: The real-life Manderley, and the other country houses that inspired Daphne du Maurier: The writer Daphne du Maurier was fascinated by the English country house. Jeremy Musson explores her evocation of these buildings with the help of photographs from the Country Life Image Archive and a series of specially commissioned drawings by Matthew Rice. (Jeremy Musson, 28 December 2025, Country Life) -ESSAY: If Any Writer Is Due for a Revival, It’s One of Literature’s Most Misunderstood Novelists (Laura Miller, September 30, 2025, Slate) -INTERVIEW: Daphne du Maurier always said her novel Rebecca was a study in jealousy: Seventy-five years after Daphne du Maurier published 'Rebecca’, her son tells Christian House how the author’s own torrid life inspired this enduring story (Christian House, 17 August 2013, The Telegraph) -ESSAY: In Praise of Daphne du Maurier (Parul Sehgal, July 6, 2017, NY Times) In 1937 an Englishwoman - bright and bored and drowning in children - sat down and sketched out a story. “Very roughly, the book will be about the influence of a first wife on a second,” she wrote. “Until wife 2 is haunted day and night … a tragedy is looming very close and crash! Bang! Something happens.” -ESSAY: This bucolic 1946 newsreel about Daphne Du Maurier could also be the beginning of a horror film. (Dan Sheehan, April 20, 2021, LitHub) -AUDIO: You know Daphne du Maurier's 'Rebecca' - but she also wrote these terrifying tales (Maureen Corrigan, October 16, 2025, NPR) -ESSAY: How Daphne du Maurier wrote Rebecca (Matthew Dennison, 19 Apr 2008, The Telegraph) -ESSAY: Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca taught me how to love literature: I didn’t have high hopes for Rebecca, but I believe it to be the underrated classic of the 20th century (John Crace, 20 Aug 2014, The Guardian) Then came Rebecca. I had no great hopes for it. As far as I recall, it had a fey-looking heroine on the front - I’m fairly sure I hadn’t read a book written by a woman since I’d stopped reading Enid Blyton - and a strapline that said “Daphne du Maurier’s classic gothic romance”. I didn’t know what a gothic romance was, but it didn’t sound that great. Still, the back cover blurb promised death and intrigue, so it was worth a punt. Better than mooching around aimlessly waiting for the TV schedules to start. -ESSAY: Close Reading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier: The First Chapter: On the page and on the screen (The Novel Tea by Neha & Shruti, Apr 09, 2025) -ESSAY: Daphne du Maurier: A Queen of Atmospheric Novels (A Bag Full of Stories, 29/11/2019) -ESSAY: The Second Mrs. de Winter (CJ Hauser, October 13, 2020, The Paris Review) -ESSAY: Inherit the Earth (Sadie Stein, September 18, 2014, The Paris Review) -ESSAY: Rebecca How Atmosphere Is Established (AirstreamRaider) -ESSAY: Daphne du Maurier’s Cornwall (Breaks in Cornwall) -ESSAY: Reading Pathway: Daphne Du Maurier Books (Tika Viteri, Jan 27, 2023, Book Riot) -PODCAST: Daphne du Maurier’s Forgotten Classic: In this episode we are joined by literary agent Becky Brown where we discuss ‘The King’s General’ by Daphne du Maurier - a civil war romance set in Cornwall. (Sherlock & Pages, 1/16/25) -ESSAY: Daphne du Maurier: Novelist who traced past to a French debtors' jail (Hugh Schofield, 7/02/22, BBC) -ESSAY: Growing Pains, Daphne du Maurier (Return of a Native) -ESSAY: Sex, jealousy and gender: Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca 80 years on: Du Maurier’s bestselling novel reveals much about the author’s fluid sexuality - her ‘Venetian tendencies’ - and about being a boy stuck in the wrong body, writes Olivia Laing (Olivia Laing, 23 Feb 2018, The Guardian) -ESSAY: A Hauntological Reading of Daphne du Maurier’s "Rebecca" (Nil Korkut-Nayki, June 2021, English Studies at NBU) -ESSAY: Gaslighting (Jennifer Fraser, January 4, 2026, Skeptic) -ESSAY: My Real Rebecca: On Daphne du Maurier's Groundbreaking Feminism (Araminta Hall, FSG: Works in Progress) -THESIS: Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca: A Cautionary Tale Against Villainous Women (Erin Spellman, Fall 2024, Submitted to the Jackson College of Graduate Studies at The University of Central Oklahoma) [pdf] -THESIS: The Popularity of the “Feminine Monster”: The Malleability of the Female Gothic in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, “The Birds” and “Don’t Look Now” (Sarah Salman, Winter 2020, University of Michigan) [pdf] - - -REVIEW INDEX: Daphne du Maurier (Kirkus) - -REVIEW: Du Maurier's 'Rebecca,' A Worthy 'Eyre' Apparent (JONATHAN YARDLEY, March 16, 2004, Washington Post) It is no exaggeration to say that du Maurier was the 20th century's Charlotte Bronte and "Rebecca" the 20th century's "Jane Eyre." The parallels between the two authors and the two books are obvious. Though Bronte's childhood circumstances were straitened and du Maurier's privileged, both girls lived essentially interior lives in which imagination, storytelling and fantasy were central. Both published early (Bronte under the pseudonym Currer Bell) and both became wildly successful; Michael Mason, in his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of "Jane Eyre," says it "may be the most read novel in English," and he may be right. Both women eventually married, du Maurier eagerly and Bronte reluctantly. -REVIEW: Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca (Charles L.P. Silet, The Strand) -REVIEW: Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca : On Gothic mansions, secrets, death, and exes. The second in a series of personal essays about reading. (Sarah Nicole Prickett, Hazlitt) -REVIEW: of Rebecca (Kirkus) -REVIEW: of Rebecca (The Literary Archives) -REVIEW: of Rebecca (Charlotte Poole, Reading Sheffield) -REVIEW: of Rebecca (Books on the 7:47) -REVIEW: of Rebecca (Julia’s Bookshelves) -REVIEW: of Rebecca (Fictionfan’s Book Reviews) -REVIEW: of Rebecca (Lonesome Reader) -REVIEW: of Rebecca (Literary Ladies Guide) -REVIEW: of Rebecca (Historical-Fiction) -REVIEW: of Rebecca (Dear Author) -REVIEW: of Rebecca (Logos Library Blog) -REVIEW: of Rebecca (The Gothic Library) -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: Fear of Heights: a review of Daphne du Maurier, “Monte Verità” (Sadie Stein, September 17, 2015, Paris Review) -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: Rereading Rebecca: A review of “Daphne du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller,” by Margaret Forster, and “Mrs. de Winter,” by Susan Hill (Sally Beauman, November 1, 1993, The New Yorker) -REVIEW: of -REVIEW: of FILM: -FILMOGRAPHY: Daphne du Maurier (IMDB) - -FILMOGRAPHY: Rebecca (1940) (IMDB) -FILMOGRAPHY: Rebecca (1940) (Rotten Tomatoes) -FILMOGRAPHY: Rebecca (1940 (MetaCritic) - -ESSAY: Rebecca to Rachel: 10 of the best Daphne du Maurier films: Ben Wheatley’s new version of the gothic thriller Rebecca joins an impressive list of big-screen Du Maurier adaptations (Anne Billson, 19 Oct 2020, The Guardian) -ESSAY: 'Rebecca' at Eighty: The Women Behind the Hitchcock Classic: In 1938, Joan Harrison read a galley of Daphne Du Maurier's masterpiece. She wouldn't rest until she had the rights to adapt it. (Christina Lane, 10/21/20, Crime Reads) - -FILM REVIEW: Don’t Look Now at 50: Nicolas Roeg’s mesmeric horror of inescapable grief: The acclaimed adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s short story remains a visually immersive descent and a chilling portrayal of loss (Scott Tobias, 16 Oct 2023, The Guardian) -FILM REVIEW: “Don’t Look Now,” Nicolas Roeg’s Uncanny Masterpiece (Michael Schulman, November 29, 2018, The New Yorker) - - -REVIEW: Netflix’s New Rebecca Misses What Made Its Predecessors Great: Ben Wheatley’s movie adaptation trades Freudianism for feminism and loses. (Laura Miller, Oct 19, 2020, Slate) Book-related and General Links: -ESSAY: Wrestling With Ghosts: an intimate investigation into the plagiarism case involving Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Carolina Nabuco’s A Sucessora (José Eduardo Lins, Oct 21, 2024, Medium) -INTERVIEW: The Best Daphne du Maurier Books recommended by Laura Varnam: Daphne du Maurier is one of the most overlooked writers of the twentieth century, says Oxford University's Laura Varnam. As her best known-work, Rebecca, continues to attract new movie adaptations and du Maurier enjoys a critical renaissance, Varnam explores the books which highlight this novelist's sheer range and brilliance-from biography and fiction to history and horror. (Interview by Stephanie Kelley, Five Books) -ESSAY: ‘She wrote the best first line - and the most chilling stories’: Stephen King on the dark brilliance of Daphne du Maurier: From Rebecca to The Birds and scores more creepy short stories, Du Maurier was queen of the uncanny, writes the US horror maestro (Stephen King, 28 Sep 2025, The Guardian) -ESSAY: The real-life Manderley, and the other country houses that inspired Daphne du Maurier: The writer Daphne du Maurier was fascinated by the English country house. Jeremy Musson explores her evocation of these buildings with the help of photographs from the Country Life Image Archive and a series of specially commissioned drawings by Matthew Rice. (Jeremy Musson, 28 December 2025, Country Life) -ESSAY: If Any Writer Is Due for a Revival, It’s One of Literature’s Most Misunderstood Novelists (Laura Miller, September 30, 2025, Slate) -INTERVIEW: Daphne du Maurier always said her novel Rebecca was a study in jealousy: Seventy-five years after Daphne du Maurier published 'Rebecca’, her son tells Christian House how the author’s own torrid life inspired this enduring story (Christian House, 17 August 2013, The Telegraph) -ESSAY: In Praise of Daphne du Maurier (Parul Sehgal, July 6, 2017, NY Times) In 1937 an Englishwoman - bright and bored and drowning in children - sat down and sketched out a story. “Very roughly, the book will be about the influence of a first wife on a second,” she wrote. “Until wife 2 is haunted day and night … a tragedy is looming very close and crash! Bang! Something happens.” -ESSAY: This bucolic 1946 newsreel about Daphne Du Maurier could also be the beginning of a horror film. (Dan Sheehan, April 20, 2021, LitHub) -AUDIO: You know Daphne du Maurier's 'Rebecca' - but she also wrote these terrifying tales (Maureen Corrigan, October 16, 2025, NPR) -ESSAY: How Daphne du Maurier wrote Rebecca (Matthew Dennison, 19 Apr 2008, The Telegraph) -ESSAY: Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca taught me how to love literature: I didn’t have high hopes for Rebecca, but I believe it to be the underrated classic of the 20th century (John Crace, 20 Aug 2014, The Guardian) Then came Rebecca. I had no great hopes for it. As far as I recall, it had a fey-looking heroine on the front - I’m fairly sure I hadn’t read a book written by a woman since I’d stopped reading Enid Blyton - and a strapline that said “Daphne du Maurier’s classic gothic romance”. I didn’t know what a gothic romance was, but it didn’t sound that great. Still, the back cover blurb promised death and intrigue, so it was worth a punt. Better than mooching around aimlessly waiting for the TV schedules to start. -ESSAY: Close Reading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier: The First Chapter: On the page and on the screen (The Novel Tea by Neha & Shruti, Apr 09, 2025) -ESSAY: Daphne du Maurier: A Queen of Atmospheric Novels (A Bag Full of Stories, 29/11/2019) -ESSAY: The Second Mrs. de Winter (CJ Hauser, October 13, 2020, The Paris Review) -ESSAY: Inherit the Earth (Sadie Stein, September 18, 2014, The Paris Review) -ESSAY: Rebecca How Atmosphere Is Established (AirstreamRaider) -ESSAY: Daphne du Maurier’s Cornwall (Breaks in Cornwall) -ESSAY: Reading Pathway: Daphne Du Maurier Books (Tika Viteri, Jan 27, 2023, Book Riot) -PODCAST: Daphne du Maurier’s Forgotten Classic: In this episode we are joined by literary agent Becky Brown where we discuss ‘The King’s General’ by Daphne du Maurier - a civil war romance set in Cornwall. (Sherlock & Pages, 1/16/25) -ESSAY: Daphne du Maurier: Novelist who traced past to a French debtors' jail (Hugh Schofield, 7/02/22, BBC) -ESSAY: Growing Pains, Daphne du Maurier (Return of a Native) -ESSAY: Sex, jealousy and gender: Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca 80 years on: Du Maurier’s bestselling novel reveals much about the author’s fluid sexuality - her ‘Venetian tendencies’ - and about being a boy stuck in the wrong body, writes Olivia Laing (Olivia Laing, 23 Feb 2018, The Guardian) -ESSAY: A Hauntological Reading of Daphne du Maurier’s "Rebecca" (Nil Korkut-Nayki, June 2021, English Studies at NBU) -ESSAY: Gaslighting (Jennifer Fraser, January 4, 2026, Skeptic) -ESSAY: My Real Rebecca: On Daphne du Maurier's Groundbreaking Feminism (Araminta Hall, FSG: Works in Progress) -THESIS: Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca: A Cautionary Tale Against Villainous Women (Erin Spellman, Fall 2024, Submitted to the Jackson College of Graduate Studies at The University of Central Oklahoma) [pdf] -THESIS: The Popularity of the “Feminine Monster”: The Malleability of the Female Gothic in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, “The Birds” and “Don’t Look Now” (Sarah Salman, Winter 2020, University of Michigan) [pdf] |
Copyright 1998-2015 Orrin Judd
