Manderley Menabilly, was influential in her descriptions of the setting, though a much smaller house. Several years after writing the novel, she leased the manor (1945–1967) from the Rashleigh family, who have owned it since the 16th century. Like Menabilly, Manderley could not be seen from the road. 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
Daphne du Maurier Scapegoat", which she partly financed. Du Maurier was often categorised as a "romantic novelist", a term that she deplored, given her novels rarely have a happy ending, and often have sinister overtones and shadows of the paranormal. In this light, she has more in common with the "sensation novels" of Wilkie Collins and others, which she admired. The obituarist Kate Kellaway wrote: "Du Maurier was mistress of calculated irresolution. She did not want to put her readers' minds at rest. She wanted her riddles to persist. She wanted the novels to continue to haunt us beyond their endings." Du Maurier's