George du Maurier

Trilby Annotated George du Maurier

Trilby (1894) is a gothic horror novel by George du Maurier and one of the most popular novels of its time, perhaps the second best selling novel of the Fin de siècle period after Bram Stoker's Dracula. Trilby is set in the 1850s in an idyllic bohemian Paris. Though it features the hijinks of three lovable English artists - especially the delicate genius Little Billee - its most memorable character is Svengali, a Jewish rogue, a masterful musician, and an irresistible hypnotist. Trilby O'Ferrall, the novel's heroine, is a magnificent half-Irish girl working in Paris as an artists' model and laundress; all the men in the novel are in love with her. The relation between Trilby and Svengali forms only a small portion of the novel, which is mainly an evocation of a milieu, but it is a crucial one.