Manderley Manderley Manderley is the fictional estate of the character Maxim de Winter, and it plays a central part in Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel, "Rebecca", and in the film adaptation by Alfred Hitchcock. Located in southern England (often said to be Cornwall as this was where the author lived and was explicitly stated as such in the Hitchcock adaptation), Manderley is a typical country estate: it is filled with family heirlooms, is run by a large domestic staff and is open to the public on certain days. In spite of the house's beauty, the main character, the unnamed "I", who
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