George Du Maurier
Trilby
(1894)
The famous ‘Punch’ cartoonist eventually turned to novel-writing as his eyesight failed.
Wikipedia notes:
His second novel Trilby, published in 1894 fits into the gothic horror genre which was undergoing a revival during the fin de siecle. The story of the poor artist's model Trilby O'Ferrall, transformed into a diva under the spell of the evil musical genius Svengali, created a sensation. Soap, songs, dances, toothpaste, and a town in Florida were all named for the heroine, and a variety of soft felt hat with an indented crown (worn in the London stage production of a dramatization of the novel) came to be called a trilby. The plot inspired Gaston Leroux's 1910 potboiler Phantom of the Opera and the innumerable works derived from it. Although initially bemused by Trilby's success, du Maurier eventually came to despise the persistent attention given to his novel.
I have used one of du Maurier’s own illustrations as a title image.
The source text omitted all the accents and contained a lot of scanning errors, so I have restored accents and reformatted as necessary. Please let me know if I have missed anything.
I have incorporated Anais9000's corrections, plus some others, so have taken down the original version (which had 4 views) and am up loading a revised one.
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