Trilby is a novel by George du Maurier and one of the most popular novels of its time. Published serially in Harper''s Monthly from January to August 1894, it was published in book form on 8 September 1895 and sold 200,000 copies in the United States alone. Trilby is set in the 1850s in an idyllic bohemian Paris. The late nineteenth-century novelist George Gissing read the "notorious" novel in May 1896 with "scant satisfaction". 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.