The Istoriaphile’s Corner

I remember the summer I met her.  I was in junior high, to old for kid’s books and too young (and snobbish) for the historical romances my mother favored.  When I whined that I wanted something new to read, Mom looked at me thoughtfully and handed me a library book with a drawing of the English countryside on the cover. “Try this” she said.”It’s surprising.”  I glanced at the title, turned to the first paragraph and was hooked with the first line,”Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”   Some forty years later and I’m still hooked, returning as often as possible to the house in Cornwall called Manderly.  You see, I’m obsessed with Rebecca. For Rebecca is a novel about obsession.  The book began while the author, Daphne du Maurier, was living Egypt with her husband, Lt. Col. Tommy Browning and it grew out of two secret obsessions of her own: her intense homesickness for England and a packet of letters she found.  The letters were from an unstable, beautiful woman Tommy had been engaged to for a short time, long before he met Daphne.  Daphne and Tommy had not been married all that long when she found…