Трильби: Роман Джорджа дю Морье

1895 novel by George du Maurier

the 1894 novel by George du Maurier

Trilby is a novel by George du Maurier and one of the most popular novels of its time. Published serially in Harper's New Monthly Magazine from January to August 1894, it was published in book form on 8 September 1894 and sold 200,000 copies in the United States alone. Trilby is set in the 1850s in an idyllic bohemian Paris. Though Trilby features the stories of two English artists and a Scottish artist, one of the most memorable characters is Svengali, a rogue, masterful musician and hypnotist. Trilby O'Ferrall, the novel's heroine, is a half Irish girl working in Paris as an artist's model and laundress; all the men in the novel are in love with her. The relationship between Trilby and Svengali forms only a small, though crucial, portion of the novel, which is mainly an evocation of a milieu. Lucy Sante wrote that the novel had a "decisive influence on the stereotypical notion of bohemia" and that it "affected the habits of American youth, particularly young women, who derived from it the courage to call themselves artists and 'bachelor girls,' to smoke cigarettes and drink Chianti." The novel has been adapted to the stage several times; one of these featured the lead actress wearing a distinctive short brimmed hat with a sharp snap to the back of the brim. The hat became known as the trilby and went on to become a popular men's clothing item in the United Kingdom throughout various parts of the 20th century, subsequently gaining popularity elsewhere and seeing a resurgence in popularity in the early 1980s, when it was marketed to both men and women in an attempt to capitalise on a retro fashion trend.

The extraordinary initial sales of the book almost 100,000 copies were sold in the first two months were, no doubt, greatly enhanced by the pre publication controversy created when the eminent artist, James McNeill Whistler, initiated legal action against both du Maurier and Harper Brothers, demanding that all textual and visual references to "Joe Sibley", the pompous and eccentric "idle apprentice", (obviously based upon Whistler) be removed from the proposed book. As a consequence of Whistler's action, Harper Brothers removed all of the references in question from the book prior to its publication and, also, removed them from its reprints of the March 1894 issue. On 2 December 1894, the Chicago Sunday Tribune gave details of Whistler’s protests, and published a side by side comparison of the original text and illustrations (from pp.577, 578, and 579 of the March 1894 magazine), and those of the altered published volume (pp.142, 143, 144, 145, and 146).

It was popularly believed that the hypnotic control Svengali has over Trilby was modelled after the relationship between the French harpist and composer Nicolas Charles Bochsa and the English operatic soprano Anna Bishop. Anna Bishop had left her husband Henry Bishop (later Sir Henry), the composer of "Home! Sweet Home! ", for Bochsa. Bishop was 23 years her senior and Bochsa was 20 years older than Anna. Bochsa became her manager as well as her lover. She sang in many opera houses on their extensive travels throughout Europe (particularly in Naples, Italy), North America and Sydney, where Bochsa died suddenly in 1856 and is buried. Sir Henry Bishop had died the previous year. Anna Bishop later remarried, continued travelling and singing professionally into her seventies, and died in New York City. The character of Little Billee is a reference to an eponymous ballad by William Makepeace Thackeray.

The late nineteenth century novelist George Gissing read the "notorious" novel in May 1896 with "scant satisfaction". Trilby inspired Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera (1910) in part. It was also known for introducing the phrase "in the altogether" (meaning "completely unclothed") and the term "Svengali" for a man with dominating powers over a (generally female) protégée, as well as indirectly inspiring the name of the trilby hat, originally worn on stage by the lead actress in the play based on the novel.

Trilby has been criticized for its depiction of its Jewish antagonist, Svengali. Most notably, George Orwell wrote that the novel is overtly antisemitic. Specifically, Orwell believed that du Maurier attributes all of Svengali's villainous and rapacious qualities to his Ashkenazic Jewishness. While du Maurier does introduce another Jew into the work who possesses more virtuous qualities, he is careful to note that this is due to his Sephardic Jewish ancestry. Furthermore, du Maurier seems to believe that possessing Jewish blood gives one an advantage. According to Orwell, this type of antisemitism was popular in du Maurier's time.

Brown, Thomas Allston. A History of the New York Stage from the First Performance in 1732 to 1901, New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1902. Davison, Neil R. "'The Jew' as Homme/Femme Fatale: Jewish (Art)ifice, "Trilby," and Dreyfus." Jewish Social Studies 8 (Winter–Spring 2002): 73–111. Accessed through JStor on 4 September 2009. Masson, Madeleine, Christine: A Search for Christine Granville, G. M., O. B. E., Croix de Guerre, with a Foreword by Francis Cammaerts, D. S. O., Légion d'Honneur, Croix de Guerre, US Medal of Freedom, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1975; republished by Virago, 2005. McNaught, W. "George du Maurier and Trilby." The Musical Times 81 (November 1940): 435–438. Accessed through JStor on 4 September 2009. Parry, Albert. Garrets and Pretenders: Bohemian Life in America from Poe to Kerouac. New York: Covici Friede, 1933. Taylor, Jonathan. "The Music Master and 'the Jew' in Victorian Writing: Thomas Carlyle, Richard Wagner, George Eliot and George Du Maurier." In The Idea of Music in Victorian Fiction. Edited by Sophie Fuller and Nicky Losseff. Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2004. Weliver, Phyllis. "Music, crowd control and the female performer in Trilby." In The Idea of Music in Victorian Fiction. Edited by Sophie Fuller and Nicky Losseff. Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2004. Weliver, Phyllis. Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860–1900. Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2000.