Rebecca (novel) Rebecca (novel) Rebecca is a Gothic novel by English author Dame Daphne du Maurier. A best-seller, "Rebecca" sold 2,829,313 copies between its publication in 1938 and 1965, and the book has never gone out of print. The novel is remembered especially for the character Mrs Danvers, the fictional estate Manderley, and its opening line: While working as the companion to a rich American woman on holiday in Monte Carlo, the unnamed narrator, a naïve young woman in her early 20s, becomes acquainted with a wealthy Englishman, George Fortescue Maximilian “Maxim” de Winter, a 42-year-old widower. After a fortnight of courtship,
George du Maurier the novel, is known to this day as a "trilby". The plot inspired Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel "Phantom of the Opera" and the innumerable works derived from it. Du Maurier eventually came to dislike the persistent attention given to his novel. The third novel was a long, largely autobiographical work entitled "The Martian", only published posthumously in 1896. George du Maurier was a close friend of Henry James, the novelist; their relationship was fictionalised in David Lodge's "Author, Author". He was buried in St John-at-Hampstead churchyard in Hampstead parish in London. George du Maurier George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier