Over the years, some have attributed this fascination with complex and dangerous femininity to the author’s fraught relationship with her own sexuality. Along with Mary Anne and Rebecca, 1951’s My Cousin Rachel centres around a seemingly charming and guileless widow who seduces her cousin before completely taking over his life and fortune. Many of du Maurier’s books focus on mysterious - often unlikeable - women. In other words, it feels real in the way only very raw, secret emotions can.

Perhaps that’s why the book has never once been out of print in the 82 years since its initial publication: It speaks to the jealous and intimate fascination that can exist between women, and the poisonous insecurity that follows. It’s a novel about a woman dreaming of a certain life, then finding herself feeling completely out of place once she gets it. Rebecca - which over the years has yielded multiple film adaptations including an Oscar-winning 1940 film by Alfred Hitchcock, and the latest Netflix version directed by Ben Wheatley - is the ultimate story of imposter syndrome. Rebecca, her husband’s enigmatic and mysterious first wife, takes centre stage in her thoughts, in her dreams, and in the stately rooms and darkest corners of Manderley, the Cornish manor house that Rebecca called home before her untimely death.

Instead, the second Mrs de Winter is relegated to the outskirts, living in the shadow of a ghost.

She’s not the leading lady in her own life, let alone the book she narrates. It’s not a coincidence that the protagonist of Daphne Du Maurier’s most successful novel, 1938’s Rebecca, is known only as the second Mrs de Winter, no first name ever given.

Author daphne du maurier