Rebecca is the story of two women, one man, and a house. Of the four, as Hitchcock once observed, the house, Manderley, is the dominant presence. Although never precisely located (the word ‘Cornwall’ is never actually used in the novel), its minutely detailed setting is clearly that of an actual house, Menabilly. Du Maurier discovered Menabilly, on its isolated headland near Fowey, as a young woman, when she first went to live in Cornwall; she wrote a magical account of the first time she saw it.
