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| Rebecca, an Oscar winning film, 1940 starred Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier with Judith Anderson as the maid. |
Free books are common enough in the digital age.
Free masterpieces are not.
For readers who have somehow missed Manderley, or who have been meaning to return, a small literary windfall has arrived. Amazon is offering a Kindle edition of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca free for a limited time, a rare chance to download one of the 20th century’s most durable novels without charge. In a marketplace dominated by new releases and algorithmic buzz, the sudden reappearance of a classic at zero cost feels almost subversive.
The promotion applies to the Kindle edition and, as with most such offers, may vanish without much notice. Amazon’s free classic promotions tend to last only a few days. Readers interested in securing a copy would be wise to act quickly. The book can be found by searching “Rebecca Daphne du Maurier Kindle” at Amazon.com or by visiting the Kindle Store and navigating directly to the Rebecca product page, where the listed price will reflect the current promotion.
Published in 1938, Rebecca opens with one of the most recognizable first lines in modern fiction: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” In that single sentence, du Maurier establishes the novel’s mood of longing and unease. The story begins in Monte Carlo, where a shy young woman, serving as companion to a wealthy American, meets the recently widowed Maxim de Winter. Their courtship is swift, their marriage impulsive. What follows is less a romance than a psychological reckoning.
At Manderley, Maxim’s grand estate in Cornwall, the new Mrs. de Winter finds herself in competition with a ghost. Rebecca, Maxim’s first wife, is dead before the novel begins, yet her presence permeates every hallway and ritual. The housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, keeps Rebecca’s memory polished and weaponized. The unnamed narrator, uncertain of her own worth, begins to sense that the house itself resists her. Du Maurier builds suspense not through spectacle but through atmosphere, tightening the emotional vise chapter by chapter until the novel shifts from social anxiety to outright mystery.
Rebecca was an immediate international success and has never gone out of print. It occupies a singular place between genres: gothic romance, psychological thriller, domestic drama. Its influence can be felt in everything from midcentury suspense fiction to contemporary tales of marriage and identity. At its heart lies a question that still resonates: how does one live in the shadow of someone else’s legend?
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| Controversial is a good word to describe the career of English novelist and short story writer, Dame Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989). |
Daphne du Maurier, born in London in 1907 into a family steeped in the theater, published her first novel in 1931, but it was Rebecca that secured her reputation. She spent much of her life in Cornwall, whose moody coastline and shifting weather find their echo in Manderley’s brooding landscape. Over a career that spanned decades, she produced novels, short stories, and plays marked by emotional intensity and a keen sense of place. In 1969 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. When she died in 1989, Rebecca remained her defining work.
The novel’s cultural afterlife has been equally robust. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 adaptation, produced by David O. Selznick, won the Academy Award for Best Picture and remains a touchstone of cinematic suspense. Hitchcock understood that the real drama of Rebecca lies not in overt horror but in suggestion, in corridors half lit and conversations half finished. A 2020 adaptation introduced the story to a new generation, proving that Manderley still exerts its pull.
For contemporary readers, the appeal of Rebecca may lie less in its gothic trappings than in its emotional clarity. Du Maurier captures the fragile psychology of a young woman measuring herself against an impossible standard. The novel is, among other things, a study of how myth can distort love and how secrecy corrodes trust. Its pages move with deceptive ease, carrying the reader from Riviera sunlight to Cornish gloom with steady assurance.
For those who have long meant to discover why generations have returned to Manderley, or for those who want to revisit its corridors once more, the moment is at hand. A search through Amazon Books in the Kindle Store for Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier will lead to the current offer. If the price reads zero, the dream of Manderley can begin again.
