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 du Maurier (1946–69). When she was elevated to the Order of the British Empire as Dame Commander in 1969, she was titled Lady Browning; Dame Daphne du Maurier DBE (1969–89), but she never used the title. According to her biographer Margaret Forster, she told no one about the honour, so that even her children learned of it only from the newspapers. "She thought of pleading illness for the investiture, until her children insisted it would be a great day for the older grandchildren. So she went through with it, though she slipped out quietly afterwards to avoid the attention of