Rebecca's Tale is told by Ellie Julyan, the Colonel's youngest daughter, who cares for her father at home. The narrative shifts produce a very different structure from the original "Rebecca", as well as a more postmodern tone that emphasizes the various narrators' unreliability. Also, the book is sometimes placed in a separate genre: while "Rebecca" is classified as a Gothic novel (du Maurier detested its categorization as a romance), "Rebecca’s Tale" is often considered a mystery. "Rebecca’s Tale" continues twenty years after du Maurier's conclusion and begins with the same classic line: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” Most
Daphne du Maurier affair with Gertrude Lawrence, as well as her attraction to Ellen Doubleday, the wife of her U.S. publisher Nelson Doubleday, were cited. Du Maurier stated in her memoirs that her father had wanted a son; being a tomboy, she wished to have been born a boy. "The Daphne du Maurier Companion", edited by Helen Taylor, includes Taylor's claims that du Maurier confessed to her in 1965 that she had had an incestuous relationship with her father and that he had been a violent alcoholic. In correspondence that her family released to biographer Margaret Forster, du Maurier explained to a trusted