A young woman working as a lady’s maid in Monte Carlo is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives—presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.

Originally published in 1938 by Victor Gollancz Ltd., the British publishing house ordered a first print run of 20,000 copies. Within a month, Rebecca had sold more than twice that number. Since its initial publication, Rebecca has never gone out of print, selling 2.8 million copies between the years 1938 and 1965 alone. The novel has been adapted numerous times for stage and screen, including a 1939 play by du Maurier herself, and the 1940 film adaptation directed by Alfred Hitchcock which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Renowned for its infusion of Gothic macabre into the romantic, Rebecca has also been celebrated as an important piece of feminist literature—a savage critique of gender power dynamics and society’s fear of powerful women. Writing for The Guardian, Olivia Laing said of the novel, “What Daphne du Maurier did was build emotional landscapes that can be entered at will, in which difficult and untamable desires were given free rein. Maybe because of her relationship with gender, she was able to make worlds in which people and even houses are mysterious and mutable, not as they seem; haunted rooms in which disembodied spirits sometimes dance at absolute liberty.”

Cited by many contemporary novelists, Daphne du Maurier’s masterpiece remains a source of inspiration. Stephen King called the novel, “excellent entertainment… du Maurier created a scale by which modern women can measure their feelings,” while Erin Kelly praised it as “the greatest psychological thriller of all time… I see du Maurier as a forerunner to Patricia Highsmith, Ruth Rendell, Gillian Flynn: she is the giant whose magnificent shoulders the rest of us stand upon.”

Rebecca, the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love and the struggle to find her own identity, continues to cast its sinister spell on readers over 85 years later.