Trilby: Illustrated

Trilby is a novel by George du Maurier and one of the most popular novels of its time, perhaps the second best selling novel of the turn of the century era (often known as Fin de siècle) after Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Published serially in Harper's Monthly in 1894, it was published in book form in 1895 and sold 200,000 copies in the United States alone. Trilby is set in the 1850s in an idyllic bohemian Paris. Though it features the stories of two English artists and a Scottish artist, one of the most memorable characters is Svengali, a Jewish rogue, masterful musician and hypnotist.

Trilby O'Ferrall, the novel's heroine, is a half-Irish girl working in Paris as an artists' model and laundress; all the men in the novel are in love with her. The relationship 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.