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George Du Maurier Author & Illustrator

Elaine Showalter is Professor and Chair of the English Department at Princeton University. Her books include The New Feminist Criticism and Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siecle. George Du Maurier was born in Paris into a bilingual household and spent his childhood shuttling between London, Paris, Boulogne, and Belgium. After studying art in Paris, he made a career in London in journalism and magazine illustration. He joined the staff of Punch and quickly became known for his witty lampoons of high society. Encouraged by his friend Henry James, he wrote his first novel, Peter Ibbetson, in 1891. Trilby (1894), his second novel, became an immense international success, generating a craze - `Trilby-mania' - that went beyond the novel itself. Manufacturers vied to produce Trilby products - from ice-cream to shoes - and a town in Florida named its streets after characters in the book.