My Cousin Rachel is a Gothic novel written by English author Daphne du Maurier, published in 1951.

Bearing thematic similarities to her earlier and more famous novel Rebecca, it is a mystery-romance, set primarily on a large estate in Cornwall.

The story has its origins in a portrait of Rachel Carew at Antony House in Cornwall, which du Maurier saw and took as inspiration.

[1] Ambrose Ashley is the owner of a large country estate on the Cornish coast and has been guardian to his orphaned cousin Philip since the latter was eighteen months old.

On Sundays, Philip's godfather Nick Kendall and his daughter Louise come to lunch with them, as do the Reverend Mr Pascoe and his family.

Ambrose writes that he has met a cousin of theirs called Rachel – the widowed Contessa Sangalletti – in Florence.

In it, Ambrose tells Philip about his illness and talks of Rachel's recklessness with money and her habit of turning to Rainaldi rather than him.

The first film adaptation, Henry Koster's My Cousin Rachel starring Richard Burton and Olivia de Havilland, was released in 1952.

Professor Nina Auerbach judged it as "superficially" more faithful, including a more complex treatment of Rachel.

[7] The novel is commemorated by the My Cousin Rachel Walk, which stretches five miles in the Barton lands in Cornwall, where some of the action in the novel takes place.