family. He is strongly disliked by Maxim and several other characters. Since Rebecca's untimely demise, his one and only true friend and confidante is Mrs Danvers, whom he calls "Danny", just as Rebecca had done. Colonel Julyan: The investigator of the inquest into the true cause of Rebecca's untimely demise. Dr Baker: A doctor, who specializes in gynaecology. A few hours before her death, Rebecca went to see him in secret, when he diagnosed her with an unspecified type of cancer. Location The fictional Hôtel Côte d'Azur, Monte Carlo The fictional Manderley, a country estate which du Maurier's editor noted "is as much an atmosphere as a tangible erection of stones and mortar" Development In 1937, Daphne du Maurier signed a three-book deal with Victor Gollancz and accepted an advance of £1,000. A 2008 article in The Daily Telegraph indicates she had been toying with the theme of jealousy for the five years since her marriage in 1932. She started "sluggishly" and wrote a desperate apology to Gollancz: "The first 15,000 words I tore up in disgust and this literary miscarriage has cast me down rather." Her husband, Tommy "Boy" Browning, was Lieutenant Colonel of the Grenadier Guards and they were posted to Alexandria, Egypt, with the Second Battalion, leaving Britain on 30 July 1937. Gollancz expected her manuscript on their return to Britain in December but she wrote that she was "ashamed to tell you that progress is slow on the new novel...There is little likelihood of my bringing back a finished manuscript in December." On returning to Britain in December 1937, du Maurier decided to spend Christmas away from her family to write the book and she successfully delivered it to her publisher less than four months later. Du Maurier described the plot as "a sinister tale about a woman who marries a widower....Psychological and rather macabre." Derivation and inspiration Some commentators have noted parallels with Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Another of du Maurier's works, Jamaica Inn, is also linked to one of the Brontë sisters' works, Emily's Wuthering Heights. Du Maurier commented publicly in her lifetime that the book was based on her own memories of Menabilly and Cornwall, as well as her relationship with her father. While du Maurier "categorised Rebecca as a study in jealousy...she admitted its origins in her own life to few." Her husband had been "engaged before—to glamorous, dark-haired Jan Ricardo. The